


The Food Cart Job

by page_runner



Category: Leverage
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, and cats as a personality analysis tool, and this story has two chefs, food carts, it had to be food carts, look they live in portland, smol angry knife wielding friends, who are obviously going to be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 10:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8840278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/page_runner/pseuds/page_runner
Summary: She was only here for a long weekend, using this convention as an excuse to see Alice for the first time in over a year, or using Alice as an excuse to get away for a convention, or using both as a reason to finally take a vacation, because it was about damn time.At least, that was the original plan.





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InklingDancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InklingDancer/gifts).



> Secret Santa present for InklingDancer who prompted "Peggy goes on a "spy mission" with the team (bonus points for Amy and/or Tara and/or Maggie)." Well I managed Amy, at least.
> 
> This got waaaay longer than I originally imagined it, but it was so much fun riding around in Peggy's head. And naming fictional cats after real life ones.

“There is no one here dressed up as a pie, Hardison, are you kidding me, man?” The voice was irate, but pitched low, and Peggy ducked her head down behind the pamphlet someone had shoved in her face earlier, pretending not to be eavesdropping on the guy growling into the phone in front of her. “ _NO._ No couples going as salt and pepper, and don’t even get started on the— _NO._ For one thing, I’d be the goddamn mustard.” He was stocky, short enough that she had a good eyeline on his very impressive biceps, and if they were going to be stuck in this line much longer, she just might try chatting him up.

“I’ll be back in time for dinner rush, quit worryin’—hang on, line’s movin, gotta go.” He hung up quickly. The line hadn’t moved. At all.

“Manager?” she asked, because dinner rush was a much simpler small talk starter than “If you’re mustard, who’s the ketchup?” If there was a ketchup.

He turned and she couldn’t help but notice he had nice blue eyes, even nicer hair, and looked briefly he like he wanted to stab someone. That was fair. She frequently wanted to stab people.

The murder look smoothed away. “Owner. Who’s a giant nerd and has a very different idea of what a convention looks like,” he grumbled.

“He thinks we cosplay as food?” Almost immediately her brain presented her with an idea for a cute poofy skirt printed with golden lattice work and a tiny cherry hat. She _really_ needed to spend less time on the internet.

“Yeah. Not the craziest idea he’s had.”

“What would that be?”

“Buyin’ a brewpub in Portland when he doesn’t know shit about food.”

“And you agreed to work there?” Not to be hasty on the judging, but this guy sounded like he had as much patience for incompetence as she did.

He snorted, but there was something soft in his voice when he answered, “Well, what are ya gonna do when he buys it for you?”

“Bu-buys it?” _What are you going to do indeed?_ And there went her chance at a cute guy who liked food and reminded her a bit of a cat with his tangle of irritation, affection, and dignity. _Like that would have ever been anything, Peg. What are you going to do, move to Portland?_ She was only here for the weekend, using this convention as an excuse to see Alice for the first time in over a year, or using Alice as an excuse to get away for a convention, or using both as a reason to finally take a vacation, because it was about time, and Mel could handle things on the catering front just fine until she got back. Good chance for her assistant to take off the training wheels.

“Right?” His smile was a strange mix of amusement and irritation that oddly reminded her of Alice.

“I mean the menu must have been a _nightmare_ to develop. Do you handle the beer or does he?”

“It was. But he can’t get enough of the science, so the beer is straight up his alley. I gotta make sure he don’t go fallin off the kettles. Or makin’ something extra crazy. And then, few months back, he went and got one of those stupid lasers. You don’t need lasers to make good food!”

Peggy was both in agreement with this and desperately wanted to play with the laser. The foam potential _alone_.

“I’m Peggy,” she said, still slightly disappointed that someone with the means to buy him a brewpub and annoy him with lasers had gotten there first. Still, that was no reason not to make a friend.

“Eliot,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation that seemed unnecessary. It was just a first name, after all. She wondered if it was fake.

“So what’s this place called? Maybe I’ll have time to swing by.”

“Bridgeport,” he patted a few pockets and then shrugged. “Never remember the damn cards.”

“I’ll look it up.” The line was finally moving, and by the time she was done with the booth, he’d vanished, probably to get back to his kitchen before the dinner rush. She called Mel to check up on both the business and the cats, and rant a little about the cute, annoyingly taken guy. She had a few more demos to hit before heading out to meet Alice for drinks — at a brewpub, come to think of it, but then Portland was swarming with them, so that was hardly a coincidence.

 

*****

 

Two hours later, she was standing in front of the place Alice had given her the address for, though she’d just called it “The Brewpub.” The door said “Bridgeport”. _Of all the brewpubs in Portland..._ Peggy thought as she pulled open the door. The place was bustling, but Alice had a booth to herself, rather than one of the smaller tables, and she waved, making the surprised remembering-to-smile expression Peggy hadn’t realized she’d missed until that moment.

Once they were settled, Peggy scanned both the clientele and the menu, impressed. Eliot had done an excellent job finding an equilibrium between the food and the beers, while still keeping it unique. “How’d you pick this place?”

“I know the people who run it.”

That, Peggy decided, was not the whole truth. She was used to that with Alice, what with her job and all. Still, she took a special glee in responding, “Oh, you mean Eliot and his boyfriend?”

Alice choked on her water. “How do you—”

They were interrupted by their waitress, who’d dropped off their waters with a smile earlier, returning to their table, face stricken.

Peggy’d managed enough waitstaff to know whatever the problem was, it was serious, and the girl wasn’t here to take their order. Instincts kicked in. “Sweetie, what’s the matter?”

Alice took a moment to change course, as she usually did with people, before pulling the girl into the booth. “Amy? Someone after you? Again?”

_Again?_

“No, Parker, not me. Um...” She looked down at her phone and then glanced at Peggy.

_Parker? Maybe ‘Parker’ is her spy cover here?_

“It’s okay, we go way back,” Peggy said as a reassurance, though it was only partially true. She knew very little that was real about Alice, but she trusted her and it was clear Amy did as well.

Amy sucked in a shaky breath. “I think someone just tried to murder a friend of mine?”

“How?” Alice’s tone was spiced with too much enthusiastic curiosity and not enough solemnity, but in terms of an Alice-type response it was surprisingly restrained.

“Hit and run. She’s in the hospital. Got out of surgery an hour ago. She’ll live, but…” Her voice shook and she swallowed hard before rushing on. “She owns a food cart. In pod 29. But someone’s been trying to run her out. A few days ago, there was a propane fire, that luckily one of her neighbors saw. And she’s had a guy saying he was a health inspector come round and threaten her with fines, but she didn’t think he was legit. And now this. I’d think she’s paranoid, but...” she looked down at her clenched fingers. “I’ve kinda learned people can be really awful.”

She’d been giving Amy her full attention as she talked, but now she turned, hoping Alice wouldn’t say anything too...well… _Alice_.

She wouldn’t. Alice’s face had gone the color of sour milk, her features frozen. “Go get Eliot.”

Amy glanced up, shocked. “It’s the middle of dinner rush! He’ll—” She saw Alice’s face, nodded and dashed off.

“Alice? Are you okay?” It wasn’t a question she’d normally think to ask the other woman, but right now she seemed to be balancing on a knife’s edge of composure.

“ _Fine_.”

_And that isn’t the truth at all._

Amy returned with Eliot, and she watched his face go through a truly impressive range of expressions as he looked from her to Alice, but the moment his gaze rested on the blonde girl, he left Amy to slide into the booth next to her, his focus entirely taken up.

“Someone you need me to dismember?” His voice was low, and entirely serious.

“Considering it.”

Peggy considered the fact that she should maybe not be here, but couldn’t really think of a non-awkward way to scootch out of the booth, so instead she pulled Amy in next to her and squeezed her hand in comfort. Amy shot her a quick, shaky smile and squeezed back.

“I’m Peggy,” she told Amy. “I’m a friend of Alice’s from Boston.” The introduction felt unnatural, but it was something to say.

Eliot and Alice were sitting close enough that their entire sides touched, with none of the stiffness Alice usually had at human contact. Alice didn’t like to be touched, in her experience, but she seemed steadier now. He turned back to them and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Hi? Again? I know I said I’d try to see your place, but this is completely accidental. Alice said to meet here.” She was babbling, but he’d just offered to dismember someone. _Wet-work,_ the part of her brain that marathoned too many crime shows supplied. _He’s another spy._

“Alice,” he said slowly, tasting it, while turning to stare at Alice/Parker. “Peggy. That _Peggy_?”

Alice had collected herself and was staring at Peggy, with intense suspicion for some reason. “I should have asked earlier. How do you know Eliot?”

“We met at the convention today. He was yelling at his boyfriend about not wanting to dress up as mustard.”

Amy started giggling somewhat hysterically at that, and some of the tension seemed to ease.

“Actually, I said, if we were dressin’ up as condiments, which we ain’t, _not in a million years_ , I’d be the mustard, and he’s the ketchup, cause he gets all over the place and makes a mess.”

“Ketchup looks like blood.” Alice/Parker observed, inexplicably. “What am I?”

“Relish, obviously.”

“Good. I like pickles.” She was back to sounding like Alice. Or Parker. This had to be one of the weirder conversations Peggy’d ever witnessed, but Amy was unphased, or possibly just distracted.

Alice suddenly seemed to remember her existence. “Eliot will take you to the hospital to check up on your friend and make sure she’s safe.”

He nodded, calm and serious. “Hardison’s gonna have to try to call in Miguel to run the kitchen, and good luck with that, he’s got his kid’s birthday party tonight.”

“I’ll take over.” Peggy offered, because she didn’t quite know what was going on here, but she knew she could be a pinch-hitter in a short-staffed kitchen.

Eliot hesitated for a long moment then nodded. “Thanks. C’mon, I’ll introduce you and threaten them a bit.”

Peggy was well-versed in making staff fall in line, especially as a caterer waltzing in and taking over a kitchen for an event, but introductions never hurt and Eliot’s were brief, threatened some truly creative violence, and made it perfectly clear that no one believed he’d ever actually carry through with the threats, but they’d follow his every order regardless.

“Bit like herdin’ cats,” he muttered to her and she smirked, because it was exactly like herding cats. She had nine now that Mel was her roommate.

It wasn’t until much later as she was plating a burger with a pickle on the side that she realized Alice had assumed she’d be a part of a hypothetical couples condiment costume. But then five other things demanded her attention, and she set it aside to consider later.

 

*****

 

“Later” was after the kitchen survived dinner rush in one piece, followed by closing, prep for tomorrow, and clean up. “Later” almost came when a ridiculously tall, far too handsome guy turned up leaning on a counter, like he owned the place. Which, as it happened, he did.

“So you’re Peggy.” He wore his wide grin more comfortably than Eliot or Alice, and she couldn’t help but like him immediately.

“That’s me.” _He looks familiar..._ “You were the lawyer in the trial...” More questions. So many more questions.

“Which ti- Ah yeah. Jury duty, right. Hardison.” He stuck out a hand and she shook it, automatically feeling for nicks or burns, and finding none. _He does leave the cooking to Eliot, then._

“You’re the one who wanted to dress up as condiments?”

Hardison raised his eyebrows. “He tell Parker ‘bout that?” There was that name again. She probably should remember to use it, though Eliot had known who “Alice” was.

“I met Eliot at the convention. It was the type of conversation that begs eavesdropping.”

That got a laugh out of him. “As a professional eavesdropper of sorts, I gotta agree with you.”

 _Professional eavesdropper?_ “Are you also a,” and she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder, even though she knew the rest of the kitchen staff was gone for the night, “a _spy_?”

“A what-now?” He stared at her for a moment, before wandering to the door and yelling out into the empty restaurant. “HEY, PARKER!”

Parker appeared a moment later, just removing the phone from her ear. “Eliot says she’s safe - she didn’t see the driver, barely remembers the car, doesn’t have a license plate, and she’s got a cracked pelvis, two cracked vertebrae, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured ulna. Oh, and a concussion.” She folded her arms, hugging herself. “With all that, it’s not like they need her _actually_ dead.” Peggy winced at the stark assessment. She shouldn’t be surprised; whoever Alice/Parker actually was, she’d never been great at empathy.

Hardison gave her a questioning look, though what the question was, Peggy had no idea. Alice/Parker shook her head and Hardison sighed.

“I’ve got a few leads on the car, or at least, I’ve got security cameras tagged to search once I have somethin’ to go on. We got anything?”

“Black sedan.”

“Oh. great. Yeah, that’ll narrow it down.”

Peggy watched them, mired in confusion. This didn’t really sound like spies. As far as she knew, spies investigated national security threats, or bombs at Venezuelan embassies, not hit-and-runs in Portland. “Um. Guys? What’s going on?”

Hardison eyed Alice/Parker, arms folded. “Parker. Peggy here thinks you’re a spy.”

“Peggy thinks I’m Alice.” Parker explained, as if that made everything clear.

There was something deep and long-suffering about the way Hardison responded, “You _are_ Alice.”

“Alice wasn’t a spy. You made her a bookkeeper. Which is the only word with three sets of consecutive double letters.”

“I _know_ , that’s kinda why I chose that, I liked typin’ it. Not to mention, no one ever wants to know what a bookkeeper does. Which begs the question…”

“Venezuelan Embassy.” Peggy said, because every time Alice/Parker began talking they went in a different direction that just made things more confusing. “Alice was supposed to check out my date for me, but somehow she ended up stealing him, he turned out to be a thief, she turned out to be a spy, and the worst waiter in the world turned out to have a bomb.” She thought for a moment. “Oh and Marge! How is Marge?”

“Who’s Marge?” Hardison asked, followed up with “and what the hell was I doing during this...oh hang on that was the poker game that Hurley interrupted with the drug smuggling nun!”

“Sophie said you were playing with dogs. And Sophie is Marge.”

“Lemme guess you came up with that one. And I wasn’t playing! Eliot wanted to flirt with the security lady, so he did distraction while I climbed the fence. Damn dogs.”

Peggy silently filed away the fact that Eliot _did_ flirt with women as justification for hitting on him earlier. One small thing she’d gotten sort of right in a sea of wrong. She wasn’t even going to ask about the nun.

“Okay. So. Your name _isn’t_ Alice. You _aren’t_ a bookkeeper or a spy, neither is Hardison, but Eliot _is_ a chef?” _Who offers to dismember people. I mean. I could probably figure out how to dismember someone. It wouldn’t be that different than butchering a pig…_ Her rational brain was considering this far too, well, rationally. “So what _are_ you? Both of you? And why did you move to Portland and buy Eliot a restaurant?”

“He must like you.” Parker-Not-Alice observed. “He told you all that and he let you run his kitchen. He won’t let me run the kitchen.”

“Mama, that’s because Eliot’s a confoundingly sensible person who knows your proclivities around sharp things and fire.”

Parker giggled. It was not the type of noise a sensible person made, but Hardison just grinned fondly. “You wanna go first on the introductions, babe?”

“Hi, I’m Parker.” She looked quite pleased with herself.

“Is that your first name or your last name?” she asked, shoving away the realization that Hardison had used two endearments for Parker in the span of two sentences. _Later._

“Why would I need two?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m a thief. I steal things.”

“She’s leaving out the bit where she explains we’re the good guys.”

“Right. Yes. We help people who need it.”

“I hack, do the computers, identities, that sorta thing.”

“And Eliot?”

Hardison hesitated and before he could answer, Parker cocked her head. “They’re back.”

Eliot and Amy came through the door, and Peggy saw the quick scan he did of the kitchen, making sure everything was in order. Whatever he did with Parker and Hardison, he belonged right here. She should know. In school, she’d listened to the practical advice of her parents and advisors that most restaurants failed, she’d probably always struggle, and never be successful if she followed her dream of becoming a chef. So she’d chosen food science, become a nutritionist, lived in L.A. with her cats and her boring job, spending her evenings yelling at cooking competition shows until she’d had it, and dropped everything (except the cats) to move across the country, and start a catering company. She didn’t know how Eliot had found himself in the kitchen, but she recognized the look immediately.

“Any fires?”

“None that were out of control.” She turned to Amy. “How’s your friend?”

“Currently pretty high on morphine. Eliot’s apparently some kinda wizard at getting coherency out of people drugged to the gills, but I don’t think she’s going to be much help in identifying whoever did this. Her mama gave a statement to the cops, but we beat them to the actual room.” She gave Eliot quite the side-eye. “ _Someone_ didn’t want to talk to them.”

“They ain’t gonna figure anything out, not unless she remembers somethin’ later. Which is definitely possible. I’ve asked her nurse to let me know if anyone besides cops and family show up.”

“By asked, I’m guessin’ you mean, flirted outrageously?”

“I have his number, if you want it,” Eliot smirked. “Anyone else hungry?”

“I hope so, otherwise what was the point in saving all that food?” Peggy muttered and wandered off the fridge, returning with a stack of containers.

“I take back ever callin’ you disgustingly normal.” Hardison grinned. “Lemme get those, cmon, we’ll head to the back.”

“DISGUSTINGLY _NORMAL?!?!_ ”

“Hey now, I meant it in a nice way!” He took the containers from her, precariously balancing the pile as he led the way.

“What’s in the back?” she asked, still fuming.

“Headquarters,” Parker somehow had gotten the container of fries, despite the fact that Hardison hadn’t put anything down yet, they were in the middle of a staircase, and she _knew_ that box had been towards the bottom of the stack. She stuffed three into her mouth and tried unsuccessfully to talk around them. “Firrrsh sste—”

“First step is chewin’ your food,” Eliot growled and took the box away from her.

She swallowed and stuck her tongue out at him. “First step is intel. And making sure no one else gets hurt.”

“I know the lot’s up for sale,” Amy offered. “Since it’s close to downtown, it’ll go fast. Suri had set aside a pretty big chunk of money, and was going to make an offer – as part of a co-op with the other cart owners in the lot.”

“That way they’ll have a permanent spot, right?” She’d read an article or ten about Portland’s carts. They were mostly parked on private land, and could lose access at the owner’s whim. Having the security of a co-owned space would offer much more security.

“Yeah. But they won’t be the only ones making an offer.” Parker bounced through a door and the rest followed, Peggy staring at the bank of screens covering on wall. The place felt lived in, and she couldn’t help but notice Amy seemed to know her way around, heading to some cabinets in the kitchenette to grab plates for everyone.

Hardison juggled the food containers down on the bar, talking with his mouth full. “Shesshh gaaaa poi—.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Who else is making an offer?”

“You didn’t let me finish!”

“ _I_ didn’t let you finish?! No one could understand—”

“GUYS.”

“This normal?” Peggy nudged Amy as she took a plate from her.

“Ohh yeah.” The girl gave her a quick smile. “It’s weirder when the three of them aren’t bickering, actually.”

“Hardison, just run it.” Parker ordered.

“Girl, I don’t got a whole lot to run yet, only had three hours.”

“You know that’s not gonna make us stroke your ego, right?”

Amy’s face went into her palms, and she very clearly said, “Hardison, if you dare respond, I’m quitting on the spot.”

“Aaand, I’m running it.”

Amy breathed a quick sigh of relief and turned back to Peggy. “This is the first time I’ve seen exactly what it is they do, but I’ve been getting the gist for a while now. And frequently it’s out of town. So when Hardison’s gone, I’m the manager.”

She seemed a bit young for the role, but something about the girl told Peggy she could handle it. “That is some _excellent_ leverage.” Three sets of eyes turned to her. “What?”

“Parker, your friend’s a little spooky.”

“Really? Friends aren’t usually like that?”

They got settled with food, beer, and orange soda for Hardison, which made her seriously question his tastes, but she couldn’t argue the pint of citrusy wit she held _was_ excellent.

“Okay people, here’s what I got.” As he started talking, he pointed a device at the screens and images started stacking up, the first of small, dark-haired woman wearing a sari and wide grin. “Suriya Chetti. She immigrated with her parents from Sri Lanka when she was thirteen…” He trailed off, as Amy hesitantly raised her hand.

“Um. May I? I know you guys probably have a way you do this, but you know her from whatever you pulled off the internet...and apparently her immigration records, which is its own version of creepy.” She folded her arms. “I _know_ her. Please?”

“Uh. Right. Yeah.” To Hardison’s credit, he instantly moved to the side, and Amy took the floor. Eliot nodded at her and Parker ate another fry.

Amy took a deep breath. “This is Suri. My parents came here when I was three, and they both worked long hours. Suri was my babysitter, basically my older sister. Her parents owned a small cafe when I was little, but it burned down, and rather than put the insurance money toward rebuilding it all, they bought a cart and stuck the rest in a college fund for Suri. She’s never used it. I grew up around that cart, several iterations of it actually. She learned how to cook from her mother, and took it over after her dad got sick. He passed away a few years back, and she never went to college. She always said this was better, getting to cook for people, argue differences between _roti_ and tortillas with the abuela next to us. She loved it. That unused college fund? That’s what she’s putting into buying this lot. She’s rallied everyone there, everyone who’s known her and her family, everyone who’s made this a community to doing it with her, chipping in as much as they can, crowdsourcing locally and online. And they have plans, lots of them.” She stopped, aware she was rambling. “So. Um. What do you need to know?”

“Enemies?” Eliot prompted. He’d probably asked the question earlier, Peggy realized, from the way Amy nodded quickly.

“The one I told you about. Ray Johnson. He’s a smarmy git.”

“Parker, just ‘cause I hacked into Sophie’s netflix queue for you, doesn’t mean you’n Amy need to watch every British show ever made.”

The smile Amy shared with Parker wobbled less than the last one she’d tried. “She noticed. Also that you added a bunch of sci-fi to the queue.”

“Expect a call.” Parker added, making it sound extremely ominous. Eliot smirked.

“Ok, but Red Dwarf is a _classic_ , people!”

 _“Sophie” is Marge_. This was turning into one of those odd memory games, where you had to remember random facts, and were never sure which ones were important until later.

“Ray Johnson.” Eliot reminded them, with more than a hint of annoyance. Amy was right, they _were_ always like this.

Amy shrugged. “I don’t know that much about him. He dresses like a hipster, one with money, owns a cart that serves coffee, and he’s got a liquor license too, which is rare and probably means he greased some palms somewhere. He hasn’t been in the business long and he’s also made an offer on the lot.”

“By himself?” Parker asked. “Or does he have investors?”

“I...don’t know. Suri doesn’t like to talk about him. Says he’s rude, and after one conversation she decided she wouldn’t invite him to be a part of the Co-op. If they get the lot, they’re kicking him out. But that’s all I know.”

“Don’t worry, I got him covered.” Hardison got up from his perch again. “Thanks for telling us about Suri.” Amy nodded, and came to sit between Parker and Peggy. “Ray Johnson, is, as you said, a smarmy git. I started digging soon as Eliot told me you mentioned him.”

“Find anything?”

“You wanna let me finish?”

“Waitin’ for you to tell me I was right.”

Peggy leaned forward. “Right about what?”

“How stupid he is.” Parker waved a hand and the ketchup-covered french fry in it.

“We are gettin’ ahead of ourselves! You know I organize these things to have a flow, right? No? No one even considers…”

“ _Hardison.”_

“Yes. Eliot. He’s been arrested and gone to court before on assault charges. Bar fights, punching a waiter at a restaurant, guy has a temper. None of it stuck, his daddy retained some fancy-pants lawyers that got him cleared.”

“ _Who’s your daddy_?” Parker crowed.

Eliot facepalmed. “Don’t-don’t say that.”

“Seriously girl?” Hardison gave her an exasperated look before continuing. “His _father_ is some wealthy developer back East. After the last legal bailout, he basically threw Ray a million bucks, told him that was all he was getting, and he better be smart with it.”

“Has he?” Parker squinted her eyes at the image of Johnson on the screen.

“Course not.He likes the high life. Fancy penthouse apartment, drives a Tesla Model X, expensive tastes in clothes, food, and women. But on the side, he buys food carts.”

“Carts? More than one?” Eliot hadn’t sat down; instead he kept pacing back and forth behind them, like a frustrated cat.

“Ohh yeah, he ain’t the type to get his hands dirty actually doing the thing. He buys the carts off of people getting out of the business, usually after a series of unfortunate events happen that cost them a shit ton of money, oddly enough, and then hires people to work in them at low wages, like Mickey Ds, essentially.”

“And that works...in _Portland_?” The foodie wonderland of Portland began to take on a bit of tarnish.

“Sure, if you do it right.” Hardison clicked his little tool and images of the carts appeared. They looked...cute. Some were old-fashioned and rustic, others more sleek and modern, bright colors, charmingly stupid puns for names. Everything she’d expect. _Oh._

“What about the food?” she and Eliot asked together. She shot him a quick glance of amusement.

“He tends to keep with whatever the cart was selling before — everything from coffee, fancy donuts, different fusion cuisines, of course. Just puts a bit of money into the design, ups the flash to attract customers.”

Parker tilted her head. “So he likes food carts because they’re popular, but unorganized, and he can see opportunities there. He’s smart enough to make the carts fit in with the Portland vibe, doesn’t brand them all the same, so people think they’re buying something independently owned. Evil hipster.” She glared at the screen.

“He make claims about the ingredients?”

Peggy resisted tapping her nose and pointing at Eliot for that insight.

“Oh y’mean, does he like his fancy cursive chalkboards that say shit like “Locally grown and sourced?” Hardison pulled up a series of pictures. “Why yes, yes he does.”

“Bullshit.” Peggy muttered, and got a nod from Eliot, but a confused look from Parker. “Restaurants love to say they’re locally sourced, because then people are willing to pay more. And sure, sometimes they are, but most of the time, they’re fudging it. I’ve heard of owners ordering from a local farm once, and leaving that claim on their menu for years.” She hated that type of lie, because it was a lie, and it hurt everyone. Customers paid extra money for something they weren’t getting, and the local and small farm growers couldn’t bring in enough profits to keep going.

“Or just orderin’ one product, get everything else cheaper from mass production farms.”

“Or they start out with good intentions, and realize how impractical and expensive it is.”

“‘Specially when idiots don’t understand the term ‘seasonal’.”

“RIGHT?!”

“Okay, okay, okay, we get it, food nerds.” Hardison waved his hands. “Back to the briefing. The system is kinda working out for him, but he’s limited by the popularity of other carts, the fact that some of them have figured out what he’s doing and are trying to shut him out, and the fact that lots regularly get sold and close down and people have to relocate. He’s been at this a few years, and hasn’t turned much of a profit yet. Ray here would prefer a more permanent arrangement, like owning his own lot, sticking his carts on it, and leasing the remaining spaces at a premium. For that, his best bet is this lot that Suri and her co-op are bidding on, but etween the carts and his lifestyle, he don’t have that much loose change lying about, so Ray needs his path clear of obstacles. Last few days, he’s been trying to find investors, but so far none have bit.

“Soo, what happens now?”

“We destroy his soul.” Parker growled, at the same time that Hardison cheerfully announced, “Oh, we gonna annihilate his ass.”

Eliot pinched the bridge of his nose. “And _I’m_ s’posed to be the violent one.”

Parker casually swung her fist back and punched him in the stomach. It didn’t seem to make much of an impression. He made a face, she made one back, and Hardison chucked a fry at them. Parker caught it lazily. “Beat ya, Sparky.”

“They’re cold now. I ain’t eatin cold fries.”

“You are never going to get an answer to your question,” Peggy told Amy, not bothering to keep her voice down.

“Oh, right!” Parker turned back around. “Clients aren’t usually here for this part.”

Amy’s mouth twisted. “I’m not a client. For one thing, you guys pay _me_ , not the other way around.”

“Our clients don’t actually _pay_ us.” Hardison said.

Peggy swept her gaze across the huge screens, the other tech littering any flat surface, not to mention the whole _building_ they were sitting in. They got money from _somewhere._ Maybe it was better not knowing all the details. Still…

“I want to help.” All eyes jumped to her and she suddenly felt pinned like a bug. “What? I mean, I don’t exactly know what you’re going to do, but I’d prefer knowing. Last time Parker stole my invitation to infiltrate the Venezuelan Embassy, and same thing with the jury duty, though I have no _idea_ how you wrangled that.”

“That. That was an accident, because I am so good that my fake people have civic duties.”

“Riiight. Point is, obviously a food cart will be involved.” She folded her arms and silently questioned her sanity.

Eliot looked a little blindsided. “That’s kinda where I come in.”

“So you only cook?” She raised her eyebrows. “Also, you have a kitchen. Here.”

“We never quite got around to explaining what you do, Eliot.” Hardison and Parker wore expressions that Peggy would have described as ‘lascivious’ if she hadn’t sworn off romance novels for the past month.

“I’m a hitter. I hit things.” He shrugged. “Usually people.”

“That’s extremely non-specific. And in any case you’ll need help in the cart.”

“Why? I can handle the cart.”

Now it was Amy’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “Sooo whenever you skulk off to do whatever you skulk off to do, someone’s there to handle the range? Also, bathroom breaks. And it’s way easier if you’ve got one person taking orders while the other person cooks. Oh and prep time—”

“It’s a tiny cart!”

“Well, I’m five foot nothing, and it’s not like you’re a linebacker.”

Hardison choked on his drink and sprayed orange soda everywhere, giggling madly. “The image in my head is priceless right now, oh man. Like that chicken in Robin Hood taking down the rhinos.”

“What chicken—?” Eliot snarled. Hardison ducked behind a table, clearly expecting to be murdered.

“Whatever. I’m gonna go scout the lot. Parker, go get Peggy’s stuff. Hardison, make sure she’s got a comm and quit comparing me to poultry.”

“Wait, my stuff? From my hotel? Why?”

“Cause we’ve got a guy who apparently is fine running over women who get in his way, and you just volunteered to do that. That means until this is done, you’re stuck with me.” He grinned without much humor. “Still excited for a big, fun adventure?”

“Get in his way, yes. Get run over, hell no.” So maybe she shouldn’t have called him short. Still. “So I’m staying...where exactly?”

“Here. We’ve got guest rooms.” Parker bounced up. “Unless you like sleeping in vents?”

“Nooo, beds are nice?”

“Fine, be normal,” she muttered and disappeared out the window.

Peggy blinked. “Where did she-”

“To get your stuff, like I said.”

“But—she doesn’t know which hotel—”

“Marriot on 12th,” Hardison interjected.

“The room—”

“414.”

“Have a key—” she stopped. “Right. Thief.” She reached into her back pocket and was surprised to find the card still there.

“She likes you,” Eliot said. “She’ll steal someone else’s. And that’s a stupid place to keep your keycard.”

“Or she might’ve cloned it. Speaking of, make sure you do that tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah. Remember, you guys need to deal with—”

“I got it, you handle the other thing?”

“Will do, won’t have to be in—”

“—two places at once, yeah. Be nice having an extra set of hands.”

Peggy tuned out their conversation. She had enough to think about, trying to decide what she’d just gotten herself into. Amy gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks for helping out.”

Well, at least she knew why. “Um. One thing. I don’t exactly know a ton about Sri Lankan cuisine.

“You comin’?” Eliot asked Amy. He’d had apparently materialized behind them without making a sound. Amy nodded. “Can you drop me back at the hospital? I’ll introduce you properly to her ma and if you turn on that Southern charm I know you possess…”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get permission to use the cart, get recipes, all that.” They headed out the door and Peggy found herself alone with Hardison, head reeling from everything that had happened in the last five hours.

“Am I crazy for getting involved?”

Hardison tilted his head, studying her. “Well, you did just volunteer to spend multiple days in a six by twelve foot enclosed space with Eliot.”

“Says his boyfriend.”

“Hey, count me as an expert. Also do Parker and I seem all that sane to you?”

_Ah. So it is the three of them. How does Parker, of all people, manage to snag not one, but two hot guys? Some things in life are just not fair._

She gave Hardison a wry smile. “You’re forgetting I’ve known Parker, or at least two different people Parker was pretending to be for five years.”

“Nah, I ain’t forgetting anything of the sort.” He bit his lip and looked back up, eyes serious. “You know you’re the first friend I ever saw Parker make, and believe me she don’t make many. She was convinced ‘Alice White’ made the friend, not her, it was such a foreign concept. That was pretty early, in us workin’ together. We did a lot of arguing.”

“As opposed to now?”

He laughed. “Yeah, point. Some things don’t change. And no, I don’t think you’re crazy, even if my reference point’s a bit skewed. Also, I hate small spaces.” He held out a tiny clear device. “This is a comm unit. If you’re questioning your sanity now, just wait till you had the three of us in your head for a day. But it stays in while you’re out there.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s the technical stuff. We do illegal shit. We’re criminals. We _like_ breaking the law.” He must have seen something of the shock in her face at that blatant admission. He spoke his next words carefully. “We don’t like hurting people. ‘Cept for our marks, and believe me, they deserve it.”

She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Why tell me?”

“Because you volunteered to help, and I’m glad. The first thing Parker asked when we told her you were trying to be her friend was if you’d steal a painting with her.”

“We went out for coffee…”

“Yeah, that seemed like a better first step. But she likes you, and Eliot likes you, and hell, _I_ like you, but I’m easy to please. Those two aren’t. Now I’m not suggesting you join us and become a criminal, but I don’t want illusions on what we’re gonna be doing. You’ll hear me an’ Parker over the comms, and Eliot will mostly be there, when he’s not setting the hook. You just have to cook.”

“I can do that.” He was waiting for more, she realized. “I won’t turn you into the cops, or anything. Don’t worry, I’m just naive enough to find this romantic. In the dramatic sense.” She added hurriedly, and Hardison grinned, wide and far too pleased with himself.

“Good.” He showed her to a guest room, and gave her a tablet. She spent the next three hours researching Sri Lankan cuisine, feeling like a student in culinary school all over again, prepping like there was no tomorrow.

_That saying makes no sense. If there’s no tomorrow, why do I need to prep?_

At some point, she fell asleep.


	2. Day 1

She woke up to an unfamiliar alarm beeping, reached out automatically, and stabbed the buttons on the phone she found until the thing shut up. Her brain made an instinctive argument to succumb back to unconsciousness, but then she remembered what she’d be doing today, and slowly sat up, turning on the bedside light. It was still dark outside, but with the room illuminated she could see her luggage was lined up against one wall, and a pile of clothes on a chair by a small desk. The phone in her hands wasn’t hers.  _ Burner _ , the word came to her from too many cop shows, and for some reason, it’s weight in her hand made this real.

The clothes and the fake ID on the chair made it really  _ ridiculous _ .

By the time she marched out into the main room, fully dressed in a flowing top and full skirt, both woven from hemp, or linen, or  _ something  _ grown in a field, and clutching a driver’s license she couldn’t be sure  _ wasn’t _ real, she’d worked herself to a roiling boil of indignation. 

Eliot was leaning against the counter, mug of coffee in his hand. He flipped something at her, and she was surprised enough to catch it midair.

“What is it?” she asked, staring at the strand of beads.

“Somethin’ I dug out. Figured it’d go well with your persona. Mine’s too short for them now, anyway.”

The tiny corner of her brain that always latched onto the most random sliver of information shrieked,  _ Eliot wears hair ornaments?!?! _ She shoved the thought aside. She had more immediate issues with her ‘persona.”

“About that.”

“‘Bout what.” He sounded like he was still half asleep, and entirely uninterested.

“Pegasus.”

“Huh?”

“PEGASUS OSWALD?!” She held up the ID. “Who the _ fuck _ decided my name would be Pegasus Oswald??”

To his credit, Eliot only raised his eyebrows mildly. He set a tiny transparent device on the counter, gestured to his ear, and took another sip of coffee. The guy was clearly not a morning person. She tucked the earbud in as Eliot said, “Hardison.”

“Oh I heard her. Loud ‘n’ clear.” She could hear the smile in his goddamn voice. “Look, I didn’t have a lot of time—”

“Pegasus.”

“—and you’re gonna be hangin with hippies and hipsters—”

“PEGasus.”

“—an’ if I made ya a freewheelin’ flower child no one’s gonna question a background check that doesn’t turn up anything for most of your life. You know, livin off the grid, travellin’ the world, that sorta thing.”

Eliot was smirking. 

“I don’t know anything about being a hippy!”

“The clothes’ll do most of the work for you, just smile a lot, say ‘peace’—”

“Don’t listen to him, he thinks in cliches. You’ll be fine.”

“What’s your name? And why aren’t you all hippy-dippy?” Eliot, apparently going more for hipster than hippy, was wearing a dark red shirt with an open waistcoat and jeans that if they weren’t quite  _ skinny _ , were rather fitted. There were several levels of unfairness at work here.

“Ezra. An’ I want him comin’ to me. Clothes send a message.” He sounded like he was reciting information that had been beaten into his head and Peggy tried to imagine who’d given him lectures about clothes.

“Fine. What’s the plan?”

“You stay in the cart and do things with food.” There was something strange about Parker’s voice, as if the wind was whipping it away from her.

“That’s...specific…”

Eliot grunted. 

He was similarly talkative on the way to the hospital, to pick up Amy, and Peggy spent the time listening to Hardison and Parker speak in strange half-sentences that made absolutely no sense. The car made no sense either.  _ A bright orange Challenger? Seriously?  _ But she knew better than to question a man’s car, even if it seemed totally out of place. Or would later. When they pulled up, they were the only ones in the lot.

At the hospital, Amy had gotten in as talkative as Eliot. Now, when Peggy glanced back, she found the girl leaning against the window, dead to the world. Eliot opened the trunk, grabbed a blanket, a crate of vegetables and other ingredients, and a toolbox, and shut it again, putting some force behind it. Amy jumped, sitting up just as he opened the door. 

He handed her the blanket. “Lie down and crash for a bit. You got some time before people start settin’ up.”

They had plenty of time, really, Peggy thought. She’d scanned the menu and recipes Amy and Eliot had gotten from Suri’s mother, and they didn’t do breakfast fare, focused on the lunch and after-work crowds. Why they had to be here before the crack of dawn…

Amy looked ready to argue, so Peggy gave her the same look she’d give Mel when they hadn’t taken a break in seven hours of prep, cooking, and transport. It didn’t need words. She had some, ready to go, but Amy took one more look at both their faces and shook out the blanket. 

“Okay. An hour.” 

Eliot nodded, as if he was agreeing to something which Peggy was absolutely certain he was not.

“How long are you actually giving her? Where the hell did you get all that? And what in God’s name is in that toolbox?”

“Depends. Around. Stuff,” he grunted, and led the way to the circle of carts.  _ Informative, he is. _

In other cities, including Boston and L.A., food carts were typically food trucks; actual trucks that drove from location to location throughout the day to optimize their chances at customers. Portland, as usual, was different. Some of the carts could move under their own power, but most were just trailers, parked in one place for long periods of time. The empty lots they took up residence in meant their customers came to them, rather than the other way around. It was a strange mishmash of traditional restaurant and street food and Peggy itched to see how it would work in the coming day. Right now, the seven other carts in the circle were shuttered, shadowy things and she found herself sticking embarrassingly close to Eliot. 

He stopped at Suri’s cart, a cute, brightly colored box that proudly proclaimed itself as  _ Rosa’s Rotis _ . He pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. “Okay, let’s get set up.”

Parker, in their ears, muttered, “I would have just picked it.”

“Well, you ain’t here, and Mama Rosa gave me her key. Not every lock has to be picked, Parker.”

“You sound like Sophie.”

Eliot rubbed his face. “Hardison, I’m gonna set the cameras. Let me know when you got visual.”

“And audio. Whole point is hearing  _ and _ seeing.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

_ Hearing and seeing what?  _ She didn’t ask. Eliot’s answer would probably have been monosyllabic anyway. “What should I do?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Start prep.”

_ I had three hours of cramming information about an entire culture’s cuisine in my head and three hours of sleep, and that’s not even the most obvious problem here.  _ She glared at him. “Knives?”

“Don’t you…?”

She tilted her head. “There’s this incredibly annoying and most likely pointless organization called the TSA. They kinda frown on me taking my knives everywhere I go, just so I can snuggle them in the night and bring them along while conning people into thinking I know how to cook Sri Lankan cuisine.”

Hardison snickered as Eliot gave her another long suffering sigh and opened the red toolbox, handing her a cloth roll. Peggy stared at the banged up metal case, then turned to smile sweetly at him. “I read last night that Sri Lankan foods, like the mainland Indian dishes they reference, use contrasting dichotomies of flavors that seem incongruous at first, but are surprisingly complex. You sure  _ you  _ shouldn’t be doing the prep?”

She got another glare before he left to plant cameras, leaving her the crate and a lot of questions about other incongruities. She thought she heard Hardison snicker again. 

Having the extra hours turned out to be a good thing. She got a good bit of the prep done while Eliot was doing things outside, had the _parippu_ , rice, and curry started, as well as the first round of vegetables. The cuisine, flavors, and some of the cooking techniques might be new, but she was a goddamn caterer, and if she couldn’t strategize the most efficient approach to any menu, then she might as well just let Mel have the damn business. 

It was later on the East Coast obviously, and she almost sent Mel a good morning text, before realizing how much she’d have to explain. How much she couldn’t.  _ Hey, I’m up extremely early because it turns out that friend I’ve known for four years is a criminal with two boyfriends who are also criminals, and they happen to run a brewpub as a front for criminal...stuff. Oh and I’ve volunteered to cook Sri Lankan cuisine in a tiny box. _

She checked on the  _ dhal _ and did not pull out her phone.

Eliot came back, started working beside her with barely a word, and Peggy, now wide awake, partially due to an unfortunate lapse in judgment involving peppers and tired eyes, had prepared a barrage of questions, mostly just to see how long it took him to give her more than a one word answer, but the instant he started cooking, all of that went out the window. 

Eliot knew what he was doing. Specifically, Eliot knew what he was doing in this tiny box of Sri Lanka. She’d been trying to get the technique down for the  _ roti, _ an extremely thin and flexible flatbread, with the help of youtube videos, but each time she tried the quick flip that stretched the dough it tore. Eliot made a noise in the back of his throat and picked up one of the dough balls she hadn’t gotten around to destroying yet. He smashed it flat with his palm, added a dash of coconut oil, flattened it again, and gave it one, two, three flips. The thick dough transformed into a wafer thin sheet.

“It’s all in the wrist,” he explained.

“When’d you learn  _ that _ ?” 

“Was in Sri Lanka, years back. Picked up a few things.” There was an edge to his voice that suggested, forcibly, that she stop there with the questions.

She gave him a grin. “Good. Least one of us knows what we’re doing.” It wasn’t that she was satisfied, but they had the rest of today, and a few more days after that in close quarters. Patience was a virtue she could learn to cultivate. Besides, how he knew it wasn’t nearly as important as making sure he taught her. 

An hour later, her dough no longer fell to pieces. She still felt like a fraud, making food she’d barely experienced, much less inherited, but at least she felt like a competent fraud.

Amy stumbled in, mumbling baseless threats about not waking her up sooner, and automatically accepted the ladle of coconut curry Eliot passed her. “Need an informed opinion.”

She tasted, and her eyes flew open. “Where the hell did you…”

“As I told Peggy, spent some time in Sri Lanka. Years back.”

It was the same response, but Amy folded her arms, frowning. “Fighting tigers, by any chance?”

He shrugged. “Ain’t important.”

“You fought  _ tigers _ ?” She sighed at the closed look both of them gave her and went back to folding the stack of  _ roti _ she’d made into a roll for chopping.

“Listen up people,” Hardison announced, interrupting her mental image of Eliot wrangling a tiger. “Everyday, Ray makes a round of his carts. First stop is this lot, where he’s got the coffee one. He’s got nothing on his bank statements for any food or drinks at these lots, which means he’s only eating at his places, where he’s obviously comped.”

She ignored the fact that he just admitted to hacking into a guy’s bank accounts. “He could be paying in cash. Wait. How do you know he makes rounds then?”

Hardison giggled. “Location data. And yeah, he could be paying in cash, but I doubt it. Doesn’t fit his MO.”

“Coffee shop’s open.” Eliot murmured.

“Got him on the entrance lot camera. Eliot, you’re up.” He nodded and left.

“You don’t have to open for a while yet. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the others.” Amy pulled her away from the flat top and out into the lot.

“But I’m not ready!” she stammered, glancing back at the cart. 

“I tasted everything, it’s fine, the dhal is perfect, you’re good to go.” Amy waved at an elderly Hispanic woman unlocking the cart next to them. “And if I don’t introduce you to Marisa, I’ll get yelled at.”

So she met Marisa, who pursed her lips, looked Peggy up and down, nodded in satisfaction for no reason she could find, and offered her some “better  _ c _ _ afé _ than that shithead’s.” It was hard not to like Marisa. 

It was, however, impossible to talk to her with Eliot chatting up Johnson, while Hardison and Parker gabbed away wherever they were. She surreptitiously removed the comm, waved to Eliot and resolved that if he was going to yell at her she could yell right back at him, and stuck it in her pocket.

In the meantime, she accepted the coffee, chatting about learning how to toss  _ roti _ , and the dangers of peppers, which made Marisa laugh. Over the next few hours she found herself accepting crepes, donuts, and tea from the other vendors as they fired up ranges and began their own prep. It was impossible to say no. Amy introduced her, told them what had happened to Suri, and explained that Peggy and Amy’s friend from work had offered to take over the cart for a few days until they knew Suri’s prognosis. She said nothing about Johnson’s involvement, nor offered any reason for Eliot talking to the guy. Aside from Marisa, no one else voiced a suspicion about him, but Peggy saw some of the glares they threw at the coffee cart.

Eventually Johnson took off and Eliot returned to his post, beckoning to her with a jerk of his head. “You should wear the comm,” he told her as they climbed back into the cart. “It’s safer.” 

“I can’t talk to people with you three in my head,” she growled. “How the hell do you do this all the time?”

“You get used to it.” He waited for her to give in. He could keep waiting.

“Are you planning on leaving this lot?”

“No?”

“Okay, well, if the shithead comes back, and tries to blatantly murder me in front of tons of witnesses, I’ll be sure to scream extra loud.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. If you leave the cart, it goes in.”

“Deal.”   

A moment later, her first customer arrived, a regular, as it turned out, and Peggy had her hands full serving and explaining what had happened to Suri. when she did, the woman handed her a twenty. “For Suri. Keep the change. If you put out a jar, I can guarantee others will chip in too.” 

She was right. Plenty of customers dropped cash in the jar, and handed back their receipts with notes for Suri scribbled on the back. 

In between customers, she noticed the other cart owners glancing their way.

“They’re scared.” She told Eliot, stirring the simmering dhal. It smelled amazing, but her stomach was in knots.

“They know they’ve been attacked. They presented a united front, and their leader was taken out. They’re weak.” He didn’t sound all that concerned.

“What, like zebras after a tiger attack?”

“Lion attack. Zebras are in Africa. Tigers aren’t.”

“Whatever. You sound like a nature show.” 

He shrugged, and went back to slicing peppers. She made a face at his back. She’d been hoping he’d take the bait and talk about fighting tigers, but no such luck.

The next time it was slow, he muttered something about taking a look around, and disappeared. She googled “Sri Lanka tigers” out of curiosity.  _ How big is that type of tig—oh.  _

Eliot climbed back in the cart. 

“Tamil Tigers.” The name was out before she was fully certain she wanted to ask about this. “You fought terrorists there?”  _ Well, they called themselves freedom fighters, and the government called them terrorists.  _ She’d had barely enough time to learn that much and regretted bringing this up before she’d had a chance to gather more context. Eliot had said he was a “hitter”.  _ The muscle _ , the same genre-conscious brain cells that eagerly identified the burner phone told her. 

Phrases like “his face became stone” were popular in the romance novels she’d sworn off of, but they didn’t seem to happen nearly as much in real life. Then again, people like Eliot, Parker, and Hardison didn’t seem to happen much in real life, and yet here she was, watching his face harden into a mask. 

“I fought. Leave it at that,” he snapped, and began to prep an order no one had made. 

 

*****

 

They were the last ones in the lot. Peggy had dropped the subject of what Eliot did with knives when he wasn’t applying them to vegetables after that botched attempt. She could appreciate a good shut down. She couldn’t appreciate silence however, and after a few questions that ended in non-response grunts, she’d finally managed to get him on a rant about cooking shows. It carried them through closing and clean up, and she was surprised to see how late it was when Eliot went to toss the garbage. 

She left the cart to wait for him, clutching the jar for Suri and enjoying the stillness after such a long day. Her head buzzed as it always did when she found herself suddenly alone, made aware in an instant of how draining people could be. If she was back in Boston, she’d go home now, immediately dive into comfy pajamas, and tap her shoulder as an invitation to Tuppence, who liked to curl around her neck like a furry white cowl.

A shadow moved in between Marisa’s cart and the crepe stand next to it. Probably Eliot skulking, just like Amy said he was prone to. 

A second shadow moved. Not Eliot then. 

“Hey!”

The two—no  _ five _ —shadows froze for a moment, then stepped into the light of the dim streetlamp. Teenage boys from the looks of them, all ragged, and from the smell of them, unwashed.

“You’re here late, lady.”

“I have more of a right to be here late, than you have at all,” she snapped. “Lot’s closed.”

“Kinda the point in coming now.” One of them had a smirk to his voice that kindled her anger.

They circled her and her only weapon was the jar, but it was heavy and full of coins, so she waited until Smirk stepped forward and swung it at him. She refrained from putting her full strength behind it. If the glass broke, they probably start grabbing what they could from the ground, and this was for  _ Suri _ . 

Unfortunately for her, that meant he had time to catch her arm, stopping the jar’s trajectory.

Unfortunately for him, she had no problem punching him in the balls with her left hand. He moaned and dropped.

“Nice shot.” Eliot stepped through the hole Smirk had left in the circle. He nodded to the others. “You seen what she can do, wanna try me instead?”

The remaining four charged. Peggy didn’t have time to help. Didn’t have time to even step forward before they were all on the ground.

Eliot bounced a little, loosening up. “One and done? Seriously?” He shot her a look over his shoulder, jerking his head toward Suri’s cart. 

Yeah right, like she was going to lock herself away. She stepped back until her shoulder hit the wall of Marisa’s cart, and bent down, putting Suri’s jar behind her feet and picking up the largest rock she could see.

Eliot didn’t look particularly pleased, but he did look amused. Later, she’d have to figure out how he pulled that expression off. For now, the teens were staggering to their feet, including Smirk. She waved at him with the rock. 

One of the others, a smallish kid with dirty blond dreads stepped forward, head tilted to the side. “How’d you do that?” 

Another kid rolled his eyes. Probably not the first time this one chose inappropriate moments to get curious then. 

Eliot studied him for a moment then nodded. “Come at me again. You go slow an’ I’ll go slow.”

She almost dropped the rock in surprise. “ _ Seriously? _ You’re going to teach him how to beat people up?”

“I’m gonna teach him how to fight. If I find out he’s usin’ the knowledge to hurt people that ain’t hurtin’ him, I’ll break his arm.” He turned back to the kid. “You got that?”

“Yessir.” The kid nodded quickly. 

“Okay, then.” He indicated the others. “Who else wants a self-defense lesson?”

 

*****

 

“Why the  _ fuck _ did you teach them how to beat people up more effectively?” Mel would be proud of how much she was swearing today.

“Fightin’ ain’t about beating someone up. Fightin’s about your ability to control a situation so you don’t get beat up. Sometimes that don’t go so well for the other guy.”

“Like all the other guys they’re going to meet?”

“Nine times outta ten, the person starting the fight wants to control something that ain’t themselves. Or they’re picking a fight ‘cause they can’t tell the difference. Or they’re acting on orders because following orders is it’s own kind of control.” He’d clearly given this a lot of thought.

“Or they don’t see a choice.”

“Always a choice. Just not always a good one. Those kids look like got a helluva a lot of control in their lives?”

“No.”

“Well now they know a few different ways to end a fight quickly and effectively. They either live out on the street or close enough. They need that. They need all the control they can get.”

“And you’re going to give it to them?”

“I’m in a position to, so sure.”

“And that’s why you offered them jobs?”

“I offered them a meal in exchange for an hour’s work.”

“And you think they’ll take you up on it.”

“The skinny one with the dreads might. He’s curious, and the others let him ask fool questions, which is rare. So they trust him, least somewhat.” He pulled up to the Brewpub and turned off the car. “You intend that one-two thing you did with the jar?”

“Not exactly. I figured if I hit him hard enough to make the glass break, then they’d all scramble for the money, and it’s for Suri. So I held back.”

He shook his head. “This ain’t the movies. Glass is much harder than spun sugar or whatever they’re using nowadays. Still, nice recovery.”

“Please. If I can stir a pot with one hand while sauteing with the other, I can damn well punch someone in the balls while holding a jar.” 

 

*****

 

“So let me guess, you’re selling me the business, moving to Portland, and opening a food cart.” She could hear the grin hidden in Mel’s dry voice, and the familiar sound helped slow her racing brain. It had been a long day. She’d eventually texted Mel to explain the food cart thing, though not the exact circumstances.

“Um.”

“You’re seriously tempted?”

“Today was fun!”  _ I punched a teenager in the nuts.  _ “Steep learning curve, since I was subbing in with a cuisine I barely knew, but the atmosphere is way less stressful than I’d imagined.”  _ We’re conning a hipster and my neighbor is an old abuela who calls him Shithead. _ “I’d have to move six cats cross-country though.”  _ Again. Though last time it was three. _

“You’d separate Tuppence and Hermione? Cruel cat mama.” They had a point. Technically Tuppence was hers and Hermione was Mel’s, but in reality T and H belonged to each other.

“Portland’s not exactly cheaper than Boston, anyway,” she said, which wasn’t exactly a denial.

“That too. So??”

“Don’t worry, I’m coming home.”

“Wheeennn?”

“Two or three days?”

“Does Alice have a cat? Then I could understand it.”

“Alice,” she said the fake name carefully, aware of how natural it was to think of her as Parker, even after only a day, “is basically a cat herself. And so are her friends.” She’d been wondering how to explain Parker, Eliot, and Hardison without using names or specific descriptions. She’d already given general information, but Mel was going to—

“Ooh! Details, I demand them.”

—want specifics.

“Okay, one’s standoffish, tends to hiss when you get close, except for the times he doesn’t.”

“But he’s always in the room? Like Oscar?”

“He’s staring at you from the cat tree in the corner, isn’t he.” 

“I accidentally dumped his food in his water dish earlier. The hiss he gave me? It was like I’d crushed his soul and he was going to wreak vengeance upon me.”

“You monster.” Talking about cats made the rest of this day feel surreal. “Then there’s the hyperactive one that always needs toys, including a  _ laser _ , talks  _ all _ the time, and he demands attention at all hours of the day and night.”

“Really hope you’re taking some liberties with these interpretations, Peg.”

“Not as many as you might think.”

“God. Okay. And Alice?”

“How’d you know I haven’t described Alice?”

“Assumptive gender binary at work. Also, I bet Grumpy’s the chef.”

“Hey! Assumptive stereotyping at work!”

“I’m making the system work for me. Am I wrong?”

Peggy growled in frustration. “No, you’re dead on. Okay, Alice is the “if I fits I sits” cat. The one who somehow opens doors, gets into cupboards, climbs everywhere she shouldn’t. That’s definitely Alice.”

“Okay, now  _ I’m  _ tempted to come out to Portland.”

“Before I leave I’m playing with the laser.” 

“We talking pointer or death ray?”

“Food grade.”

“Fuck, I’m definitely coming to Portland.” 

Peggy grinned and listened as Mel launched into an update about the business, interspersed with yelling at one cat or another. By the time they said their goodbyes, she almost wished she was flying back tomorrow. She stared at the phone and it took a moment for her to register Parker climbing out of the vent in her wall.

“PARKER?”

“What’s  _ if I fits I sits _ ?” the blonde girl asked and Peggy sighed and brought up her Pinterest board dedicated to exactly that. 

Parker giggled as she scrolled through, probably getting some truly worrisome inspiration. Finally she said, “You lie well for a honest person.”

“I didn’t.” Peggy argued immediately.  _ I very specifically found a way not to, as a matter of fact. _ “Except about your name, and even that’s on a technicality.” When she got back, Mel would want to know more details than just their personalities as cats. She wasn’t sure how she would answer the inevitable questions.

“Exactly. Lies are best when they’re mostly truth.” Parker put down the phone and moved to the end of the bed, trying out a cat sleeping position that looked impossible for a human spine. It didn’t faze her in the least. “Honest people lie well as long as they don’t think they’re lying. Otherwise they feel guilty. I don’t know why. People lie all the time and justify those lies with more lies to themselves.”

She wasn’t  _ wrong _ , exactly. Peggy said nothing.

“But you’re honest. And so is your friend.”

“Yes, they are.”

“And…” Parker paused and somehow tilted her head to an even more ridiculous angle. “...they like cats. And want you to come home.”

“Yeah.” She couldn’t help the smile that formed, and Parker matched it, unfolding and refolding her limbs like origami until she was seated, cross-legged at the other end of the bed. 

“That’s better than cat burglars trying to get into the Venezuelan Embassy.”

Her phone buzzed several times. Mel was apparently stalking the house, finding all the cats and sending her good night pictures. Thus far they’d located Oscar, Kit-Kat, Hopscotch, and Ampersand. Five more to go.

“You trust them?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Sophie says trust is the key to friendship and I never had much use for keys. But you’re good at trust. You trusted Alice. Both Alices. You trusted first Alice to be nice, even though she didn’t exactly know what that meant. And you trusted second Alice, even though she lied to you about being first Alice.”

There was a logic there, Peggy realized, and wondered if she should be worried that she saw it. “Did Alice trust me?”

“Yes. She trusted you to be normal, and honest, and teach her how to be those things.”

“What about Parker?”

“I don’t want to be normal and honest. I just need to know how to pretend. To make the lie feel like truth.”

“And you learned that by being friends with me?”

“I learned that by being Alice, who was friends with you.” This all sounded simple, when Parker said it, before it twisted into complexities in her own head.

“Okay.” She needed to think about that more. “Are we friends? You-as-Parker and me-as-Peggy?”  _ Mel would love this conversation. _

Parker thought about that longer than felt all that reassuring. “You still trust me to be nice,” she said carefully, “and I’m not sure why. When you met Alice, she didn’t trust people, so she didn’t have friends.” She looked down at her hands, then up again. “I’m better at trusting now, so I have two best friends, like Mel is your best friend.” She bounced off the bed, and out of the room. It didn’t seem like the end of a conversation, so Peggy got up to follow. 

She opened her bedroom door slightly and stopped. Parker was on Eliot’s back, legs wrapped around his waist, like a kid getting a piggyback ride. Except she was using the extra height to kiss Hardison, all three of them entwined in some complicated pretzel.  _ And that is where your brain is stopping the curiosity train, Peg. _ She shut the door.

She should tell Parker that she and Mel weren’t...that that wasn’t their relationship—Mel had a girlfriend, for a start—but she had a feeling Parker wouldn’t care. Or see a difference. Put in Parker-terms maybe there wasn’t one. 

When she got back to her phone, Mel had sent pics of Eleanor, Haberdash, Ichabod, Hermione, and Tuppence, but she kept thinking about that circle of carts.


	3. Day 2

“Hey, Pegasus, meet Ray. He owns the coffee cart, corner of the lot, there.” Eliot’s drawl was more pronounced and full of a lazy charm that turned her stomach, though not in the way she anticipated. She preferred the Eliot she knew inside of the cart, quick to snap, but just as quick to teach, or smile when they invariably started talking food. This Eliot felt  _ bland _ , like her first attempts at this cuisine, before she’d learned to embrace the intense spices and contrasting flavors.

“Hi there, sweetheart.” Johnson gave her a full-wattage smile that somehow didn’t manage to reach his eyes.

_ Third word out is “sweetheart.” No wonder Marisa hates you. _

“Hi Ray, nice to meet you.” She’d promised to leave the earbud in today, as long as Hardison muted her feed. Too many conversations happening simultaneously to focus on her customers. Let Eliot and the others do the…. _ grifting _ , her mind supplied the newly learned word, and she would just be Pegasus Oswald, helping out a friend for a few days.

“Pegasus. Interesting name.” Ray’s eyes had briefly met hers, but now they focused somewhat lower down.  _ Ugh. _ Yes, she was inside the cart, which technically gave her an extra foot in height, but it wasn’t like that was enough to make her tower, or make men crane their necks to look at her damn face.

“Well, my folks were interesting people.” She tried not to snarl the words, beginning to understand Eliot’s approach. Maybe he had to lower his tension levels, to accommodate for the extra annoyance of dealing with this guy? Then again, Eliot didn’t have cleavage for him to focus on. 

“Play nice,” Hardison cautioned, breaking radio silence. 

She forced a smile. “Can I interest you in a  _ pol roti _ ?” She’d pulled off the coconut flatbread without Eliot’s guidance today and divvied up the first batch among the other cart owners, for their generosity the day before. Paul, who’d give her a crepe yesterday, slathered his with Nutella. “They’re a—”

“No thanks, sweetheart, I’m not a fan of that ethnic shit. If you want my advice—” Ray’s eyes swept up and back down. 

_ I don’t. _

“—you’ll adapt it. Throw the word “fusion” up there, and people will swarm. They like to feel adventurous without actually trying anything new, you get me?”

“Agree with him,” Parker ordered, as if they hadn’t had a conversation last night about how much she hated lying.

“That’s one approach,” she told him, and searched for a truth to make the lie work. “I’ve only just learned the traditional methods, I don’t think I’m quite ready to try adaptations yet.”

“Good.” That was Parker again. “Pretending to be an idiot is extremely effective with men.”

Peggy’s polite smile cracked into a true smirk and Eliot rolled his eyes behind Johnson’s back. 

“‘Sides, Peg here’s a bit of a wanderer. She was already sayin’ how she’d be movin’ on soon. And I’ll need to get back to my real job. As I said, we promised to help out for a few days, but nothin’ we can do long term on our own.”

Johnson waved a hand, radiating casual camaraderie as he addressed Eliot. “Oh please, Ezra, slaving away making someone else’s idea of a menu? You’re a glorified line cook. Cart like this means the freedom to choose what the hell you want to cook. Peg here ought to appreciate that.”

_ Peg here knows more about this business than you ever will. _ She gritted her teeth into another smile. She’d known so many guys like him, in college, in culinary school, in her personal life before she’d managed to identify how full of shit they truly were, brimming advice and backhanded compliments. 

“Oh, as long as I’ve got a sharp knife in my hand, I’m a happy woman.” She picked up a blade, appreciating the timely ring of the stainless steel.

Parker giggled, and Peggy found herself relating to the manic edge in her laugh.

“If you two join me in this investment, we’ll have a guaranteed space. You’ll have the freedom to cook what you like, and not worry about losing the spot to someone who can’t string five words in English together.”

_ Try stringing five words together that don’t give me creative ideas for this knife. _

“You show me you’re in this for the long haul, and as I said, I’ll match ya. Between Peg and I, we’ve got some spare change lyin’ around.” ‘Ezra’ gave her a meaningless smile. “Hey now darlin’, you know you’ve always wanted somethin’ like this. More secure than what you came from.”

With that twist, she felt the character he’d painted her as: a woman who’d grown up with no structure from those hippy dippy parents. A woman who’d found herself drifting as well, but desperately wanted an anchor. It both was and wasn’t something she knew, but it gave her that truth she’d been lacking. 

This time she found it easy to slip some of that desire in.  _ So that’s what Parker meant about the truth in the lie. _ “That  _ does  _ sound reassuring. As I said, my parents were interesting, but they made some foolish decisions.”

“Well, you let us take care of the details, and I promise, you won’t be going down that same road.”

_ Aaaand back to the stabby thoughts. _ Eliot must have seen the murder in her eyes—Ray didn’t, seeing as he couldn’t drag his gaze away from her cleavage—and clapped the guy on the back, guiding him away. 

“You sound like Eliot doing his angry breathing,” Parker observed. “All sharp and nasal.”

Peggy growled under her breath. Marisa, from the next cart over was approaching, her expression stormy. That, she could relate to. She pulled out the earbud and dropped it into a pocket. Having commentary while talking to the mark was one thing. Marisa had brought her hot chocolate spiced with chili this morning and emptied her own tip jar from yesterday into the one she’d set out for Suri.

“So. This how it is?” she demanded, hands planted firmly on her hips.

Peggy swallowed. She could feel the eyes of other cart owners. They wouldn’t have needed to hear her conversation with Ray, or this one with Marisa. Body language was plenty. “Look, um—”

“No, you look. Or better,  _ escuchame _ . You come here, take over Suri’s business, cook her food, ask us for money. For her. And then, you turn around and make deal with  _ him _ ? He does not respect us. He does not respect the food. I thought you did.”

Peggy bit her lip, trying to stop the roiling boil in the pit of her stomach.  _ I hate lying _ , she’d told Parker, and it was the truth. She’d never been good at twisting words, at pretending to be something she was not. She sucked at flirting, sucked at diplomacy, sucked at the little lies girls in high school would tell each other, and the bigger ones they’d tell themselves. It hadn’t made her many friends. For what it was worth, that was why she’d liked “Alice”, who’d blurted whatever she’d thought in that jury room, and thousands of times since then. Sometimes those truths weren’t nice, but at least they were honest. 

_ Though apparently only partially.  _ How many things had she lied about, really? To seem ‘normal’? How much of it was all some bigger con?

Marisa was staring her down, waiting for an answer, just like Peggy would in her own business when someone screwed up. She refused to be cowed, or spoke down to, and plenty of people had tried. 

“It’s not what you think,” she tried, and the vague truth didn’t do much to soothe her stomach or Marisa’s face.

“Two white people taking over an established cart of _ethnic food,_ ” she spat the words, “and making a deal with the shithead looking to do the same to the whole lot? Of course not. It is never what I think.”

Peggy reached in her pocket, clenched the earbud tight in her fist. “This is Suri’s cart. It will always be hers. We’re trying to help, and I know it doesn’t look like that, but believe me, I  _ know _ that guy’s a shithead and I would  _ never _ work with him.” What she didn’t know was what the trio was planning, and she had agreed to work with them. 

Parker and Hardison had been working an entirely different angle while she and Eliot were here, and all she knew about that was it made him antsy to be in a separate location.  _ Maybe if you wore the dam earbud…  _ “Amy asked us to help, and I know this looks bad, but I swear, it will work out. He’ll have nothing by the time we’re done.”

None of what she said sounded definite or very convincing to her ears, but Marisa relaxed, pressing her lips together and nodded. “I will hold you to that,  _ chica _ .”

“You better.” She relaxed her grip on the earbud. 

_ Sometimes, you have to tell the truth. That’s how you gain trust. _

 

*****

 

“YOU TOLD HER THE  _ TRUTH _ ?”  _ Ah. So that’s the difference between grumpy Eliot and angry Eliot. Extra yelling. _

There had been lot of yelling in progress when she’d remembered to stick the earbud back in, hours later, after they’d closed up. 

_ “—dunno how, but he’s definitely figured out you guys are not on his side. Dude is PISSED.” _

_ “We nearly had him! He was hooked! All we needed was one more day to close it!”  _

She’d removed the earbud out again, taken a deep breath, and confessed to Eliot that she’d told Marisa. Just to reassure her.  _ Well sure, and then Marisa reassured someone else, and then they did the same. Gossip spreads through a kitchen faster than a grease-fire and you started one hell of a grease fire, Peg. _ Which would be why Eliot was yelling at her.  _ This work is basically his other kitchen. _

“Anything we can salvage?” He was ignoring her now, working a problem she was just starting to gain the scope of. 

They arrived back at the Brewpub. Eliot jumped out, door slamming behind him, and she followed much slower, not wanting to have the conversation waiting for her inside.

Of course, that just meant they were all there glaring at her when she entered the back room. 

Instinctively, her spine straightened. They weren’t the only ones capable of glaring. “I promised Marisa that we weren’t helping him. That everything would work out.” 

“Why?” Parker demanded.

“ _ WHY?  _ How can you ask  _ why _ ? Because she was scared, and angry because she was scared, and certain that she and the others were going to get screwed again!” As she said the words, her voice rose, along with her conviction.

“I don’t get it.” Parker threw up her hands, practically vibrating, her ponytail twitching like a cat’s. “Why would you promise everything’s going to work out, while breaking everything? What’s the point of that?”

“I didn’t know she was going to—”

“Of course she was! She’s a civilian!”

“Parker—”

“AND she’s honest and normal! You can’t tell normal people things! They always feel the need to tell other normal people and it starts a whole spiral of people talking when we need them scared.”

“So this is all some big manipulation of us  _ normal people _ ?” She felt her voice rising and didn’t care in the slightest. “We’re just here for you to move about as you need? Just like the asshole you’re trying to take down?”

“Obviously! We’re CRIM. IN. ALS. That’s what we do!”

“ _ Parker _ —” 

“You said you help people!”

“We do! People just get in their own way! They complicate things! People  _ ALWAYS _ complicate things.” She stalked off, slamming the door, and leaving Peggy with a very clear understanding that she was “people” in this situation. She could live with that.

She glanced at Hardison and Eliot. “I’m sorry I screwed up the con. But I’m not sorry for making Marisa feel better. And if that makes me ‘normal people’, then I’ll take that any day.”

She walked out of the room, but did not slam the door, because she was  _ not _ a copycat,  _ thankyouverymuch _ . She would have kept going out of the building and probably back on a plane to Boston, if Eliot hadn’t somehow ended up leaning on the door in front of her, blocking her path.

“Can’t let you leave.”

“Try it,” she snapped, even though she knew it was a stupid challenge.

He folded his arms, which would have made his point just fine, but then he sighed and elaborated. “Last night we got jumped, and tonight the mark knows we’re trying to take him down. He doesn’t like being crossed, if you haven’t noticed. Tends to go run people over.”

She folded her own arms. It wasn’t nearly as impressive. “Or hire someone to do it, right? Someone like you?”

It was a low blow, or at least she’d intended it as one, but Eliot just shrugged. “I’m out of the business, but more importantly, I’m outta his price range. Hiring homeless teens in the park to sabotage carts is one thing. He doesn’t have the cash to hire someone willing to kill or go to jail for him. He hit Suri himself.”

She took a deep breath. “And he’ll try for us?”

He shrugged again. “It’d be pretty stupid, but he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is.” 

“Smart enough, apparently.”

“Nah, Plan A frequently goes up in smoke. ‘Course it usually ain’t ‘cause an honest woman volunteered to help us grift and then went and told the truth.”

“I think you defined the problem right there.” She twisted a strand of hair. “Okay. I promise I’ll stay put. I’ll help out here tomorrow, won’t get in your way, and go back to being the ‘honest woman’, though that phrase is really stupid. Maybe as stupid as ‘normal people’”

His mouth quirked into something that wasn’t really a smile and he walked away without another word.


	4. Day 3

She did apologize to Amy the next morning. She’d avoided the back room, pretending to be asleep until the others had left before making her way down to the kitchen. The brewpub wouldn’t open for another few hours, but Amy was already there, wrapping silverware in napkins, staring at nothing. 

Peggy made them omelettes and coffee before sitting down beside her and discovering she had no idea what to say. 

Amy studied the plate. “Food as apology, huh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’ve met my bosses, they seem like people who grasp simple communication skills like talking?” She picked up the coffee and took a sip. “Actions over words, right?”

“Yesterday pretty much established I am nothing like them.” The words tasted as bitter as her coffee.

“Yeah, ‘cause Eliot wasn’t making sure I ate something at the cart the other day, under the guise of having me taste test everything. Hardison didn’t order a fruit arrangement sent to the hospital for Suri’s mom. And there isn’t a very familiar teddy bear I gave Parker a long time ago, that’s now equipped with a nanny cam, which suddenly appeared in her room. There’s an app I didn’t install on my phone that shows me a live feed anytime I open it.”

“See? Totally different than an omelette,” Peggy said, but she got the point. “I am sorry.”

“Marisa called earlier to ask where you were. She liked you,” Amy continued softly. “If you hadn’t said something, she might have done something...rash. Marisa’s not one to wait around. And I already have one friend in the hospital. So, thanks.”

She lifted her head. “Thanks?”

“Yeah, I mean, they’ll figure out something. Might take Parker a while to forgive you for ruining her plan, and Hardison a while to forgive you for hurting Parker’s feelings…”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.” Parker’d wanted to steal paintings. With her. “Eliot should just write me off as a flighty hippy lady with no head for business. Johnson would buy it.”

“Well, he’s an idiot.” She finished the omelette and picked up another set of silverware. Peggy joined her, deftly wrapping and folding the napkin around a fork and knife. “Suri woke up last night. First thing she asked about was the cart. When I told her it was being taken care of, she flipped, scared someone else was going to get hurt.”

_ And they still might.  _ Her head felt like a tangled mess of contradictions. “I’m going to go start prep,” she muttered, and headed back into the kitchen. Soon it would be controlled chaos, people running everywhere, pots and pans clanging, knives drumming a staccato beat in the background. It was the type of chaos she loved, a swirling dance that always threatened to spin out of control and sometimes did, but when it held together, it made everything worth the risk.

_ The cons they pull are probably like that. _

She considered it as the kitchen filled and she finally met Miguel, a large and cheerful man without a hint of territoriality, who announced he was pleased to have her on board for the day. It was refreshing, being in a straightforward kitchen with straightforward problems.

They’d just entered the lunch rush when one of the line cooks—Lucy, if she remembered correctly—mentioned there was a kid out back asking for Eliot, and Miguel was in the middle of something. She nodded and headed back to the landing dock to find one of the teens from two nights ago. Suddenly the idea of coming out here alone seemed infinitely more foolish.

“If you’re looking for another chance to get beaten up by Eliot, he’s not here.”  _ Great, Peg, that’s exactly the kind of information you want to give him. You have  _ got  _ to learn how to lie.  _

“Oh. Um. Actually, I came about the other thing? He said if I worked for a bit…”

“Oh. That.” Eliot had been right. Possibly. She tilted her head. You’re not just here to spy in a super sneaky way?”

His mouth twisted upwards. “No, ma’am.”

She couldn’t stop the snarl that escaped. “ _ Ma’am? _ ” 

“Huh?”

“Sorry. Pet peeve. Come on in, I’ll find you a job. And a hairnet for that rat’s nest.”

“Hey!” He touched the dreads defensively. 

“If you were a cat, I’d shave them off.”  _ And if I were sensible, I’d stop insulting the kid who’s a foot taller than me. I don’t even have a rock this time. _

“Cats have fur. I have hair.” 

“You have the wrong type of hair for dreads.” She could appreciate an argument made on the basis of cats, however. “ _ Those _ are matts.”

“The hell do you know?” He followed her inside anyway.

“My roommate has dreads. Proper ones. I’ve heard the lecture about black hair versus white hair plenty of times.” Mel liked to lecture, especially two glasses of wine in, with ever-widening  gestures. Setting them off on hair was only slightly less dangerous than setting them off on food.

She found him an apron and a hairnet. “What’s your name?”

“Justin.” He wrestled the dreads under the net and fumbled until the apron was sort of tied around the back. 

“You ever work in a kitchen before?”

“Um, no, but I learn pretty quick.” 

She put him on dish duty, so the learning curve wasn’t exactly steep, but he did a good job, she had to admit. Once the lunch rush calmed down, she called him over and handed him a fully loaded plate. “Don’t even think about asking for a beer.” She had a nephew that had been trying that at Thanksgiving since he was thirteen.

“You like cats?”

“What?”

“You mentioned cats earlier.”

“Oh. Yes, I like cats. I have nine of them,” she admitted. “Why?”

“I like them too.” He didn’t say anything else for a bit, just dug into the food, and Peggy left him alone to help return the kitchen to order. 

He’d finished to food and looked half asleep when she returned, so she banged a pot harder than necessary when returning it to the rack. He jumped, blinking. “Maybe if you weren’t up all night stealing stuff, you wouldn’t be falling asleep.” She was still questioning Eliot’s original invitation. 

_ He’d told me to stay put so I wouldn’t get hurt, and now I’m feeding one of my attackers? _

He shrugged, as if that wasn’t really the issue. “Do you have any?” she asked. “Cats, I mean.” If this was some type of ploy, and she’d made a terrible life choice following Eliot’s lead, then bonding over common interests could be useful. Besides, she could never resist talking about cats.

“Not- not anymore.” He seemed to fold in on himself slightly. “I mean now it’s not exactly practical, but even before. My stepdad...he…” he gave a slight shrug. “It’s been impractical for a while. But I used to do the catch and release, right? I’m good with ferals, and it’s pretty easy to catch them if you have some food and patience. There’s some organizations that will take them and spay or neuter, give them shots and then release them again.”

She nodded, and perched on the stool next to him. 

“Of course, they don’t get it. Like, how are you supposed to explain to a cat that trapping it, cutting off it’s balls, and poking it with sharp things is for it’s own good?” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “I think I’ve been cursed at more in cat than in human.”

“Wait till you have your own. They invent special languages just for you. And then curse at you in them.”

“Sounds awesome.”

It was, and she desperately missed Oscar’s angry mrowls now. 

_ How are you supposed to explain that it’s for their own good? _ No. No, she wasn’t going to get sucked into that logic. She wasn’t going to compare a bunch of cart owners to feral cats, because, just no. There wasn’t an equivalent there. Not really. She could explain to them. Hell, she HAD.  _ And you ruined the con and the actions being taken for their own good. _

_ Goddammit. _

“How did that Johnson guy find you?” 

Justin shifted. “I won’t work for him again.”

“I believe you.” She wasn’t actually sure that she did, but he seemed to straighten a bit when she said it. “But how’d he hire you to begin with?”

“Friend of a friend, who knows a guy, who knows another guy? You know how it goes.”

She did, actually. Plenty of the food industry worked along similar lines, people getting referred and drifting from one place to the next, based on the “I know a guy” principle. Same principle that made rumors spread like a grease fire.

_ Huh. _

Justin kept talking. “First it was just, ‘Go steal wiring from these particular carts. You can sell it, keep the money. He’d pay us fifty bucks, and then we’d get whatever we’d make on top of that from the sale. It was a good gig, really.” He grimaced at the look she gave him. “But then he started telling us to scare people. Threaten them. That was more risky. Didn’t like that much.”

“And then he had you threaten Eliot.”

“Nah, we were just there to steal shit. Look, I’m not stupid. I know you don’t really trust me, and that’s fine. I wouldn’t. I’m not loyal. I can’t afford to be.”

“No. You’re a stray cat, hoping for a meal.” She stood up. “This isn’t my place, so I can’t offer you a job, or anything like that. But Eliot can. And if you help us take down Johnson, he might.” She had an idea that he would. He was the reason the kid was here, after all.

“Yeah?”

She shrugged. “No idea. But I think he’s got some notion of what it’s like being a feral cat himself.”

Justin blew out a breath. “Okay. What do you need?”

 

*****

 

She had no idea what she needed. Okay, that wasn’t technically true. She had a few ideas, but nothing that coalesced into the type of plans that seemed to spring from Parker’s head, fully formed.

Parker. That was what she needed. To apologize to Parker.

She told Justin she’d be back, and went to find the earbud. 

“Parker?”

“You don’t want Parker. You want Alice.” Peggy winced at her sharp tone. Amy was right, Parker might take some time.

“ _ You’re—” _

“ _ Shuddup, Eliot _ .” Hardison interjected. It was never going to be normal, talking to her with those two listening in. Did they understand how weird these things were? No wonder they acted like three parts of a whole, spending their days literally in each other’s heads without going entirely insane. 

“No, if I wanted to say something to Alice, I’d have called you Alice.” It actually wasn’t a hard concept to grasp, once she’d thought it through.

“The hell you got to say to Parker?”

“ _ Shuddup, Hardison. _ ” 

“Both of you, SHUT. UP.” That was Parker. “Say it.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have volunteered to help and then screwed it up. I’m not good at lying. I’m good at being direct. Too good, a lot of the time.” If they’d been talking on the phone, she’d have missed the tiny huff of agreement Parker made. “I want to help. If I try to explain why then we’ll just get bogged down in analogies based on cutting the balls off feral cats, so let’s just jump ahead to my offer?”

“ _ HUH _ ?” 

“ _ Whaaa? _ ”

“Okay. What’s the offer?”

Trust Parker to accept that. She felt the smile building and it made her next words sound even crazier as she said them. “Use me as bait.”

Unsurprisingly, Eliot didn’t like this plan.

“No.”

“Look—”

“ _ No _ .”

“Eliot, she’s got a—”

“How the hell am I s’pposed to make this more obvious? NO. Anyone is bait, its me.”

“Oh, don’t be a gallant idiot, you’d make terrible bait.” She rushed on before he could jump in again, but not before Hardison cracked up. “Johnson doesn’t respect women, but he feels threatened by us. He’s apparently fine with running us over. He was also apparently fine with you proving you could handle yourself in a fight against his teen posse, since as far as I know, you’re still on his good side. Not to mention, Hardison made me up as a freaking  _ hippy _ ! As I said. I’m not good at lying. But what I am good at is food science, food distribution, and yelling.  So for my first con can I please play to my strengths? I need to find my sea legs if I’m ever going to steal paintings.”

There was a considerable amount of silence punctuated by very distinctive breathing.

“What painting?” 

“ _ PARKER _ .”

Well, if she had to chose... “ _ My Wife’s Lovers _ .”

“The hell—?”

“Oh. The Kahler. It’s coming to Portland next year.”

“It is?”

“Portland Art Museum. On display from February till June. Mid-range security, 6 by 8.5 foot canvas, we’d need to go in through the—”

“Parker, you wanna hold on to the plan to steal a crazy cat painting till AFTER we finish the job we’re currently on?”

“Why’m I not surprised it’s a cat painting.”

Parker ignored Eliot’s muttering. “So, next time you visit?” To Hardison, she added, “I could plan that in my  _ sleep _ .” 

“I know, babe. But I’m workin’ on how to make Johnson murder Peggy.”

“ _ Make  _ him? This is an  _ attempted  _ murder, right?”

“Yup. Two crows only.”

That made no sense. But she could live with that. Probably.

 

*****

 

Parker and Hardison returned from wherever they’d been and Peggy introduced them to Justin. Hardison in quick succession managed to call his hair stupid, verify that Peggy’d fed him and that he was welcome to raid the fridge if he was still hungry, threatened him under pain of death if he touched any of the tech, and sent him off to take a hot shower.

“What?” he demanded after a very bemused Justin disappeared. 

“You were just possessed by your Nana, is what,” Eliot muttered over the comms. He was still at the cart, and Peggy grinned as yet another customer asked after Suri’s prognosis and her own absence.

“I’m takin’ that as the compliment it better have been. Don’t you go insultin’ my Nana!”

“I do that, I ain’t gettin her recipe collection, now am I?”

“The women in your lives hold a lot leverage, don’t they,” Peggy remarked, amused. “Between Amy, your Nana, Parker, and Sophie…”

“And you haven’t even  _ met _ Maggie!” Parker dropped down from an air vent in the ceiling, and it said something about the last few days that Peggy didn’t even blink.

“Maggie?”

“Nate’s ex-wife. You’d like her. She’s honest, too, but also helps us steal things.”

“Good to know I’m not alone in this moral limbo. That reminds me, we’re going to return that painting after we steal it...right?”

Parker gave her a glare and didn’t deign to answer. “Hardison, I’m off.”

“Remember, I jus’ need the key, don’t go stealin the whole car.”

“ _ She  _ wants to return a painting we haven’t even stolen yet, and  _ you _ won’t let me drive—Who’s running this crew?!”

“Parker, so help me, if you go anywhere near a car that has a top speed of ‘ludicrous’...” Eliot growled.

“Well ya won’t catch me then, will ya Sparky? None of you are any fun.” She flounced out. 

“‘Ludicrous?” She thought for a moment. “ _ Sparky? _ ”

“Eliot, I’m beginning to agree with you about this plan.” Hardison muttered.

 

*****

 

“You know a lot of this is bullshit, right?” She and Hardison were, as he put it, ‘sowing the seeds of Johnson’s destruction’. The analogy might have worked better if he’d left it there instead of pretending he knew something about gardening, while she compiled information for him on organic vs non-organic farming, local vs big ‘farm-a’, and plenty of bullshit about the dangers of GMOs. 

Instead, she’d had to listen to Eliot try to correct Hardison every time he got something wrong and Hardison dig himself a deeper hole. It took a while before she realized he was doing it intentionally, to press Eliot’s buttons, considered banging her head on the desk a few times, or at the very least throwing the earbud against the wall, and finally derailed Hardison with the bullshit comment.

“Bullshit is where I thrive, girl.”

_ Gee, I’d never have noticed _ . Still, she’d acquired some actual useful tips for her herb box back home. 

“‘Sides, I thought you got over that whole lyin’ thing.”

She shrugged. “That’s on the personal level. This is my professional pride talking. And writing. Spreading fearmongering stuff about GMOs as if they’re uniformly evil is more than wrong, it’s stupid.”

“The people have spoken.”

“The people are idiots.”

“And the Parker facet emerges at last.”

“I am  _ not  _ one facet!” Parker hissed. “That would be  _ such _ a stupid diamond.”

There was a dull thumping sound that eventually registered as Eliot banging his head against the nearest available surface. “If y’all don’t shut up, you’re eatin’ takeout for the next month.”

“See, it  _ is  _ distracting.” Her victories might be small, but they would be marked.

After a moment, Hardison added, “I get that. The professional pride thing. Sometimes, for the job, I gotta get caught on a hack. Parker has to trigger an alarm intentionally. Eliot has to lose a fight. It’s the job, but I ain’t denyin’ it sucks.”

“Yes. It does.” She went back to her fearmongering.

 

*****

 

“You like Eliot.”

Peggy forced her heart back out of her throat at another unexpected late night arrival from Parker and turned to find her in the doorway to the guest room. Her arms were folded across her front tight enough to be a self-hug, and that body language said far more than the blunt sentence had.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘like’.” She had her comm out and she really hoped Parker did as well, if they were going to be talking about this. “I’m not going to steal him, Parker.”

“Ha! You’d fail. I’m a much better thief.”

“Yes. You are.” She considered giving her a reassuring smile, then thought about how Parker usually smiled, a flash of teeth, and nothing more.

“You talk about food with him.”

Alice hadn’t been quite like this, though now that she knew Parker at her most blunt, the veneer of Alice made more sense. “It’s an interest we share,” she said cautiously.

“You’re better at food than I am.”

No sense in denying that. “Yes, I am.” She walked past her out to the kitchenette. Eliot wasn’t back yet, and Hardison had gone off for some supplies. “Hot chocolate?” she asked, not waiting for an answer before starting the preparations. “This isn’t a competition.”

“You want a boyfriend. I have two. Based on normal societal standards, I’m rich in boyfriends. That means I’m a target. But I can’t hide them, like I do with money. They’d complain, unless we’re hiding together. Which we are, but we invited you in. I invited you in, which is a breach in security, but you’re my friend.” She huffed out a breath. “I’m not good at sharing.”

_ Well that’s a minefield and a half. At least it was honest, though. _ “That was pretty good sharing.”

Parker tilted her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But that’s how I’m taking it.” She handed her a mug. “Parker. I like Eliot, but not like that. I just want to be friends. And I’m not even sure he’s interested in that. It’s kinda hard to tell with him.”

“That’s stupid. It’s obvious. He talks to you, doesn’t he?”

It seemed like a remarkably low bar to clear. “Yes, that’s true. I’d also like to consider Hardison a friend, and of course, you.”

“Why?” She was staring into the hot chocolate and Peggy realized that this time she wasn’t going to get a rambling insight into Parker’s thought process. 

“Because I like the two of you as well? As friends.” She added hurriedly.

“You and Eliot talk about food. Eliot tried teaching me why it’s special but I mostly only care that it’s special to him. I like cereal. And chocolate. Hardison likes food, as long as it’s high tech.”

Peggy felt that Parker was missing the important point here, even as she said it. But maybe it wasn’t the right approach. “People can be interested in the same thing for different reasons. The reason Hardison is interested in food is obviously not the same reason Eliot is. Or I am.” She thought about PArker climbing through her vents. “Maybe, you just need a different access point.”

“Like what?”

“Have you ever watched  _ Cutthroat Kitchen _ ?”

“What?”

“TV show. You’d like it.” She couldn’t say exactly how she knew that, but if there was a cooking show Parker would like, it would be that one.

“Can we watch it?”

“Right now?”

“You’re not doing anything.”

_ Sleeping is doing something.  _ She sighed. “Sure. We can watch it.”

By the time Eliot got back from the cart, Hardison had joined them, Parker was yelling about how a contestant should just escape the handcuffs, and she was coming back from the kitchen with a fresh bowl of popcorn and more cocoa.

His eyes flicked from the screen, to them, and back to her. “Did’ya have to? You know this is gonna give them  _ ideas _ .”

“Yup, trust me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Wife's Lovers by Kahler really was at the Portland Art Museum this year. COINCIDENCE? Totally. But I cackled anyway.


	5. Day 4

Pissing Johnson off was easy. Very easy. 

First up was Justin, who they sent out overnight to gather his friends and do what they did best, sabotage. Only this time, they were targeting Johnson’s carts. As incentive, they’d be paid, and at a better rate than what they’d been offered before. Hardison grumbled about that, complaining that they were encouraging criminal behavior.

“And your moral high ground is...?” Peggy asked, looking up from the mug of coffee she’d been staring into, trying not to regret how late they’d stayed up. 

“It ain’t exactly rocket science!”

“We’re just bidding higher! Spending cash to take him  _ out _ !” Parker’s grin was more than a little manic.

_ Okay, so maybe  _ Cutthroat Kitchen  _ worked a little too well. _

“He likes criminals to work for it. Make an effort.” Eliot grunted. Hardison was already typing away at something on his laptop, while Parker sat in Eliot’s lap, his fingers deftly weaving beads into her hair. She’d be joining “Pegasus” in her fashion choices today, so she’d demanded Eliot do her hair, weaving small strands into intricate braids. Peggy expected Parker to fidget. Both Parker and Alice always fidgeted around people, slightly vibrating at their mere proximity. Instead, aside from random outbreaks of quoting Alton Brown, she sat perfectly still and relaxed, shifting only when Eliot interrupted the low melody he was humming to murmur to her.

Peggy’d just gone for a scarf twisted into a headband today. It hid the earbud, even though Hardison kept insisting they were practically invisible. 

She wasn’t particularly nervous. Not yet. She hoped as they got moving, the momentum would drive her forward without thinking too much about what it was leading to. If she thought about that, the endgame she’d  _ volunteered for _ , she’d run for the bathroom and throw up the breakfast she’d just forced down.

_ You can do this Peg. It isn’t all that crazy. _ That was a lie. Great. Now she was lying to herself.  

Her phone buzzed; Justin texting to say they’d finished. 

“We’re up,” Parker announced, hopping off Eliot’s lap. He downed the rest of his coffee and stood up as well.

“You ready?” he asked her.

Peggy nodded and slid off her seat. “Let’s do this.”

 

Soon Johnson would be getting calls from his employees, alerting him to the sabotaged carts. If he wanted anything up and running today, he’d have to find replacements fast. 

“Think of it like a series of punches,” Eliot advised in her ear, probably to keep her mind off Parker’s driving. It wasn’t working. “Don’t give him time to recover from the first one, before hitting him again.”

“But isn’t getting replacement parts a type of recovery?” She gulped as Parker slewed the van around a corner. In the back, Hardison was still typing, though he did send a glare up to the driver’s seat.  Eliot had given them a far too cheerful wave as he climbed into the Challenger and sped off alone, while they’d climbed into “Lucille”, Hardison’s pride and joy. He’d still be on cart duty today, in position for later. She tried to close her eyes. It didn’t help.

“It’s a stressor, and it puts us in a better position for later. Part of a fight and most of a con, is getting your opponent to make the moves you want him to make. To get reckless and make bad decisions.”

“You look yellow,” Parker observed, swinging them into a parking space and slamming on the brakes.

“The term is  _ green _ , and she ain’t used to your driving technique, babe,” Hardison made shooing motions at them. “Have fun storming the castle!”

Her idea, Peggy’d learned, was called a whisper campaign. Hardison had started it online the day before, building her a blog and building a number of other blogs as well, all local foodies concerned with natural ingredients (though they all defined that somewhat differently), and the farm-to-table movement. Now, his fake personas were spreading the real news that Ray Johnson, a Silicon Valley investor, owned a fleet of carts while claiming they were independent, and worse, he was lying about the sources for his ingredients. 

Within hours, Portland’s online foodie network was in an uproar. Not all of them were against Johnson, but, Hardison noted, that was fine, it just made the debate spread further and last longer. 

Now they were heading into stage two. She clutched the sheaf of flyers and pamphlets she and Hardison had made yesterday, and started tacking them to billboards, Parker doing the same with a different set. They included pictures of canned foods inside the carts, supply boxes from huge farms, and plenty of red flags. “Name drop Monsanto and the people will already be sharpening their pitchforks.” She’d told Hardison, who’d cackled. 

They finished and moved on to the next site, Hardison keeping them up to date on Johnson’s whereabouts. “We want him to see these before he sees you. Let him get real mad, then give him a target to hit.”

Well, at least that disturbing thought distracted her from Parker’s driving.

Justin’s sabotage threw off Ray’s course as well. The only cart that was left untouched was the coffee cart in Suri’s lot, usually his first stop of the day. Eliot gave him a call, spinning a tale of getting there early and chasing off the hoodlums before they could do any damage. It gave him a further in with Johnson and fit in well with him chasing off vandals a few nights before. That cart was safe, he’d have to leave it for last.

“We got paper and digital covered, time to get people in the mix.” Hardison announced. 

“Amy’s on it.” Eliot answered. “She’s talking to the cart owners now.”

They finished the other lots, ending up at Lot 29 to wait for Johnson. The grapevine that had spread her original conversation with Marisa was in action again, and as she and Parker placed flyers, plenty of early customers and owners came to talk to them. 

This part was easy. “Pegasus” felt natural to her now, with her sharp voice and bright smiles. Pegasus told them about helping out a friend who’d been the victim of a hit and run, and even those who didn’t know Suri by name, knew the cart, and the planned co-op. By the time Johnson arrived, looking harried and furious, bitter glares followed him everywhere. 

Parker vanished into the milling customers and Peggy was alone, blatantly putting up signs when he saw her.

“ _ You got this _ .” Hardison whispered in her ear. Damn straight, she did.

She waved and marched over to him. “Hi, sugar!” She let her eyes track up and down. She was short, after all, why should she bother to crane her neck?

“You! The fuck are you doing?” Well, if he was already going to be this rude getting him to boil over would be all too easy.

“Me? Oh just providing the public with information they deserve to have.” She smiled sweetly. It was much easier now that she didn’t have to pretend to like him. “You know, you should really be more accurate with the claims you make."

“Look, lady, I have a right—”

“To sell flavorless, cheap cuisine at outrageous prices? Of course you do, hun, it’s a free country after all, and you’re a businessman. And while you’re doing that, I get to tell people that what you’re selling is not what they are buying.”

“But—“

“If I were you, I’d add just a titch more creativity to your menus. People like to feel a bit of a challenge. If they wanted a shitty burger, there’s always McDonalds. And for that matter, they can get their coffee in the same spot! No driving to separate spots all over the city, like I did to sample each stop of the ‘Johnson Experience’.” 

“Now look, bitch—“

“Yes, shithead?” He really could turn some unusual colors with a bit of prompting. “Look, don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Just give your employees creative control. They know more than you. Not like that’s hard, or anything. Oh, and pay them better.”

“This is bullshit!”

“Oh please, you wouldn’t know bullshit if you stepped in it, which you would have if you ever visited one of those local farms you claim to source your ingredients from. And this specific type of ‘bullshit’, is what I’m trained in. Or do you also have degrees in food science and distribution?” 

Her saccharine tone evaporated and she felt like she was riding the crest of a wave. “Don’t patronize me. You waltz in here with your money and fancy car and some  _ people, _ ” she gave it enough venom that she could only be referring to ‘Ezra’, “might buy it, but I was raised in farmer’s markets and co-ops. I can spot a faker looking for a quick score a mile away, and I am not afraid of  _ you _ .” She spat the last word at him and stalked away before he could respond.

Clapping and cheers from the people listening rang dully in her ears, drowned out by her pounding heartbeat. That had felt  _ amazing. _

“Damn girl, where’d that come from?” Hardison sounded ecstatic. “You pushed his buttons like he an NES controller!”

She took a deep breath, in a vain attempt to stop vibrating with adrenaline. “Oh that? Guys hate it when you talk to them like they talk to you. And usually, they can’t actually figure out why.”

Parker reappeared in front of her, before anyone else could approach. She gave her an awkward hug. “He’s storming off,” she reported, watching over Peggy’s shoulder. 

The hug may have been a pretense, but it still managed to be reassuring. Briefly.

“Ready for the fun part?” Parker asked, sounding absolutely sincere.

“That  _ was  _ the fun part. Or the cooking. The cooking was the fun part. If I got to stab him, that would be fun.” She was babbling. About stabbing people. Whoops. “What part of getting hit by a car is  _ fun _ ?!?!” she hissed in Parker’s ear.

“Just like Eliot. He always complains about that part too.”

“For damn good reason,” Eliot growled. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk ya through it, you’ll be fine.” 

“Yeah, he’ll talk you through it, while I’m over here doing all the actual work.”

“Man, if you—”

“Aand he’s in the car. It’s go time, people.”

“Okay, Peg, all you gotta do is walk forward.” Eliot’s voice was low and calm. She gave Parker something that tried very hard to be a smile, waved, and turned away.

_ Easy for you to say _ . She started toward the street, trying to walk as if her legs weren’t about to collapse underneath her. She wanted to listen for the roar of an engine, but there wouldn’t be any. She couldn’t decide if that was comforting or not.

“The guy thinks he’s smart.” Hardison had explained to her yesterday. She’d volunteered to be bait and he’d returned to the brewpub already grinning in anticipation. “He didn’t use his own car for Suri. Probably some rental under a fake name, covered the plates, washed it down before returning it. Risky, especially if the car got dented up. But less risky than using his own car.  _ That _ would have stood out.” He let the sentence hang in the air until she gave in and asked.

“What does he drive?”

The grin was back as well as a bit of a bounce in his gestures. “Tesla Model X. He’s a Silicon Valley rich kid remember?”

She’d peered over his shoulder at a picture of the car. It had ridiculous gull wing doors she’d only seen in  _ Back to the Future _ , a windshield that extended upwards into the roof of the car, but otherwise (and granted that was a generous otherwise), it looked like a normal car.

“It drives itself.” Hardison announced as proudly as if it was his. He could probably afford one, but whatever he was planning had him much more excited.

“What, exactly, are you planning?” She’d asked as the pit of her stomach prepared to drop into any handy abyss that opened up.

“Simple. I’m gonna hit you with that car.”

Some Teslas, she’d learned, because there was no way she would agree to this without excruciating detail, had the option for a semi-autonomous autopilot. The driver was supposed to keep their hands on the wheel, but the car could steer, change lanes, accelerate, and brake by itself. The car should, ideally, not hit things that were in front of it. And the thing in front of it was going to be her. 

No wonder Eliot didn’t like this plan.

“Keep walkin, you’re doin’ great.”

_ Having someone cheerlead a simple act like walking in straight line should not be so reassuring, _ Peggy thought. 

“It’s not like it’s  _ hard. _ ” Parker was, as usual, less reassuring. “You always complain too much.”

“Fine, then next time  _ you _ get hit!”

“Peggy’s right, she’s the best target this time. Besides, I have been hit by cars.”

“You’ve  _ pretended  _ to be hit by cars. There’s a difference.”

“I was kinda thinking I was in the latter category there, guys?” she whispered, trying to form words in a mouth gone completely dry.

“Don’t worry, thanks to Parker stealin’ me a spare key, and me workin’ some seriously fancy magic on this beauty, I’m the one driving the car. Johnson just don’t know that. And after the car does hit you, I’ll be able to use the footage on security cams of Suri’s attack. Two for one trouble he’ll be in when I’m through.” 

“That...that didn’t actually answer my question.”

“Peggy listen. The car is gonna hit you. Not hard, but there will be an impact. Fall onto the hood, then slide to the ground and lie still, it’s best if your face can’t be seen. Hardison will take care of the rest.”

“Okay.” She trusted them. She did.

“Don’t look up the street. Just cross in the crosswalk. You have the right of way.”

She stepped into the street, eyes straight ahead, exactly as she’d been taught not to do as a little girl.

She never heard the car. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that the silence of an electric car would be creepy. She wanted nothing more than to turn and look, to see it hurtling toward her. Well no, actually, she wanted nothing more than to sprint out of the way.

She didn’t.

She felt it thump against her hip, and the brief look of terror she gave Johnson through the windshield was one hundred percent real. 

She fell. She had to fight every fiber of her being to make herself slam onto that hood and then the pavement. For a moment, she couldn’t find any air that wanted to take up residence in her lungs.  _ I need to learn how to fight. How to control a situation. How to control myself.  _ A second later tires squealed, the car reversed swiftly and sped past her. There was a screech and a much louder thump, but she kept her head down, face covered. 

Earlier the clapping and cheers had seemed muted. Now, screams and shouting reverberated around her and through the earbud. She could hear Marisa swearing in Spanish and once again, she felt the need to tell her this wasn’t what it looked like. But then Eliot’s hands were brushing her hair back, helping her sit up.

“Look dazed,” he whispered.

“Not exactly difficult.” She’d been doing that, unintentionally, but now she almost ruined it by glaring a him. He did that quick not-smile thing and helped her to her feet.

The cheers from the crowd faded almost completely when she saw Johnson’s Tesla wrapped around a tree. He was bent over the back of it, handcuffed and held there by a man while the woman next to him read him his rights.

“Who are...?” She didn’t bother finish, still trying to convince her lungs that filling completely would be helpful.

“Regulars at the ‘Pub,” Amy supplied. Peggy hadn’t heard her approach. “Both cops. Parker played matchmaker with them a while back. I told them Eliot was doing a stint at a food cart and lo and behold!”

“They’re not bad, for cops.” Parker joined them, looking extremely satisfied.  _ Like a cat with a mouse. _

Hardison jogged up, his expression somehow gleeful and anguished at the same time. “I’m so  _ sorry _ baby!”  _ Baby? Oh the car. Of course. _

“Hardison, quit apologizing to the damn car. It’s a CAR.”

“Yes, Eliot-don’t-you-lay-a-finger-on-my-precious-orange-monstrosity-Spencer. I’m sorry, you’re right, it’s just a CAR.”

“Want me to steal you one?” Parker asked. “With less stupid doors? Those ones take forever to open. Terrible for getaways.”

“You stealing one involves you driving it, so NO. You ain’t driving a car that has a top speed of  _ ludicrous _ .”

Peggy glanced at Amy who gave her a quick smile and followed it up with a tight hug. For some reason, this made breathing easier. “Thanks. This was quite the way to spend your vacation.”

On the other side of the street, Johnson was being shoved into the back of a police cruiser. Soon there would be questions and she’d have to give a statement with a substantial helping of fiction in it. The thought probably should have fazed her more.

But in the lot, Marisa gave her a sharp nod of approval and Amy was calling Suri’s mother to tell her they’d caught the man who’d hurt her daughter. 

For that, she could lie all damn day.

“So, do we just stand here and gloat? I mean, I’m good with that, but what happens next?”

 

*****

 

That became more of a question over the course of the day. Amy dragged her (willingly) and Eliot (less willingly) to the hospital to introduce her to Suri, and her mother, Rosa, who would be taking over the cart again, while Suri healed. 

The woman in the bed looked wan, but bright-eyed, and gave them a wide infectious smile when they came in the room. It faded into confusion when her gaze landed on Eliot.

“You’re…” she frowned. “I…”

“Saw me when y’ had a healthy dose of morphine runnin through your veins. ‘Pologies if I intruded on your hallucinations.”

“Oh. That explains a lot.” She turned to Peggy. “Amy says you learn to flip roti?”

“I did my best.” 

“If Marisa did not turn up her nose at it, your best is very good.” She nodded firmly, then winced, clearly regretting it. “Thank you. For everything. You will go home now? Amy said you live in Boston.”

“I do. With quite a lot of cats.” 

“You find you want to live here with your quite a lot of cats, get a cart. You will have a spot,” she said, the promise and thanks implicit in her tone. 

Peggy smiled and pretended the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

As they left the hospital, Eliot asked, “You thinkin’ bout how to shift a buncha cats cross-country?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I have a business there. And a house. And yes, the cats. I’m not moving to Portland!” Problem was, the idea was sounding less ridiculous every time she denied it.

“Well, ya better tell Hardison that before he goes and buys you one of those carts Johnson’s gonna lose.”

“He wouldn’t—” she stopped, considered. “He totally would.”

“Yup.”

“Well. Then what am I gonna do?”

 

*****

 

Hardison had a plane ticket for a red eye to Boston waiting for her back at the brewpub. It was coach, but he told her with a wink that she’d mysteriously get bumped to first class when she boarded. “Not that I’m kicking you out, but I know, you need to get back.”

She did. She knew that. Still… “First, I need to play with that laser.” She grinned as Eliot buried his face in his hands.

They played with the laser.

Peggy promised Parker that next visit she could set up a competition for her and Eliot. Eliot pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed quietly.

They also invented a new beer, a dark heavy porter with overlapping flavors of coconut and coffee to commemorate the job. “Will you stab me if I call it ‘Pegasus’?” Hardison asked, backing off to a safe distance. 

“Not if you send me some when it’s ready.”

“Askin’ me to ship alcohol across state lines? Now look who’s getting used to criminal behavior.”

“Hardison, you know you’re a licensed manufacturer, right? And I’m a licensed dealer? I hate to tell you, but you’re actually legit.”

“Damn woman, pointing that out is just cruel!”

“Fine, if you want to get back to illegal stuff, tell me how you’re going to ensure Suri gets the lot. Johnson might have to pay eventually, but first there’s court and...” her brain caught up with her. “I’m going to need to testify, aren’t I?”

“Yup!” She hadn’t even noticed Parker dangling from the ceiling. “Practice lying.”

“Under oath. Great.” She glared at the three of them, which took some effort, with Parker hanging ten feet above her head. Hardison grinned gleefully, but Eliot ignored them all, staring at his phone. “So somehow this all ends with me  _ back _ in a courtroom. Please tell me you won’t be the lawyer again. You were incredibly boring.”

“ _ Excuse me?? _ I crafted that boredom out of the finest bullshit I could muster in the fifteen minutes of prep I had, you know how much—”

“Hardison, shut up.” Eliot commented, without any heat. He went back to texting.

“She’s impugning my honor and you’re more interested in your  _ phone _ ? I don’t believe this.”

“Toby says he’ll take the kid.”

“Ah. That’s who you were textin’. Life makes sense again.” He wandered over to lean on the counter next to Eliot, completely destroying the concept of personal space.

“Who’s Toby?”

“The guy that taught me about food. He runs a cooking school for disadvantaged kids. Figured he might have room for Justin.”

There was something about the casual way he said it, that told her Toby had probably taught Eliot a lot more than just food. Asking for details would get her nowhere, she knew, so she accepted the small portion of information in the spirit that it was given.

“Good. He could use someone like that.” She nodded at Hardison. “Well? Suri and the lot?”

“Ah, well thanks to that jar you put out, she’ll have plenty for the lot.”

“There was maybe two hundred dollars in there.”

“In the jar, sure. But I ain’t keepin it in the jar. Trust me, when I get done with it…”

“You don’t stop him now, he’ll actually tell ya how he's going to do it. It’ll take hours. Like that courtroom. Trust me.” 

“Suri will get the lot,” Parker slid the rest of the way down the rope and landed cross-legged directly behind them. Hardison rolled his eyes at being interrupted, but his irritation vanished as she slung an arm around each of their shoulders. “Trust us.” Her smile lit up her eyes. 

“I do.” Peggy said, and meant it.

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I do not know enough about cooking to actually write Eliot and Peggy doing Parker's version of Cutthroat Kitchen. But man that would be hilarious.)
> 
> I hope you liked it, InklingDancer! Thanks for the awesome prompt!


End file.
